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SCHILLEE GALLERY, 



CONTAINING 



CHARACTERS FROM SCHILLER'S WORKS, 



Dlt.WYN BY 



FREDERICK PECHT AND ARTHUR VON RAMBERG. 



FIFTY ILLUSTRATIONS FN G RAVED ON STEEL. 



Wtik §mKiytw tet, 



FREDERICK PECHT 




KEW TOEK : 
D . APPLETOJf & COMPANY, 

90, 92 & 94 GRAND STREET. 
18 6 9. 



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Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1SG8, by 

D. APPLETON & CO., 

In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the United States for the Southern 

District of New York. 



PREFACE 



"Works on art must not only explain but justify them- 
selves ; if their vitality is not sufficient to do this, all the 
recommendations in the world cannot save them from an 
early death. 

The author of the explanatory text of this work, 
acting in conjunction with Arthur von Eamberg, in 
fathering those children of the Muse which are here 
offered to the public, prefers therefore to send this book 
into the world without any sponsor, and to let it make 
its own way. The result has justified his decision, for 
the voices of the police authorities of criticism, who have 
examined into the legitimacy of these brain-children, 
as they have appeared one by one, or serially, so to 
speak, have agreed in this at least, that they have 
sound bodily health, if not fine manners ; and the public, 
whose business it is to support them, has received them 
with surprising readiness. 

It is just this that lays upon us the duty of uttering a 
few words of apology for such of our little flock as are 
not well washed and kempt. Against coolness one can 



4 PREFACE. 

arm himself with pride, but kindness at once opens the 
heart to gratitude and a sense of unsvorthiness. Both 
of the fathers knew well that the reception given to their 
progeny has been ; and must be, all the more friendly in 
proportion to the closeness with which these brain-chil- 
dren repeat in themselves the features of their mother, 
the Muse of Schiller. 

Who could fail to love her ? "Whose heart has she 
not made to glow with her look, when he on whom her 
eyes have fallen was young and full of noble aspirations ? 
Whom has she not had the power to elevate, move, warm, 
and fill with renewed youth, on meeting her in the autumn 
of life, and looking again upon the beautiful and gentle 
Muse who once stirred the youthful feelings with such 
powerful promptings ? If we once looked upon her with 
adoration, only to lose her from sight in the later storms 
of life, even if not to disown her, our astonishment will 
be all the greater to find, on meeting her again, that 
Schiller's Muse is to be prized all the higher, the more 
she is understood. What she was before to our heart, 
she becomes subsequently to our mind ; we see a new side 
of our goddess, and she, who once took our senses captive 
by her fascinating charms, now elevates us even while 
she sets us free from her slighter and more ephemeral 
allurements. 

Children, confessedly, resemble not the mother alone, 



PEEFACE. 5 

but the father as well. If this is an inevitable evil, it is 
110 less so in our case, where the peculiarities of the 
fathers are much more obvious than those of the mother. 
But if in any one of these art-children there is any thing 
that may remind the observer of the graceful Schiller 
Muse, its fortune is secure. To attain the whole vast 
perfection, the lofty elevation of that Muse, cannot be 
dreamed of. There is not a painter in Germany who is 
competent to portray adequately Schiller's characters, 
and still less can the German engravers pretend to such 
a measure of skill. Still, if the artist must abandon all 
hope of attaining the whole beauty and loftiness of the 
original, and of grasping aU the thought which animates 
and glorifies each feature, he can at least try to observe 
closely, and reproduce faithfully. He will not fail in this 
case to create a living work, and one whose similarity to 
the original will be all the more marked, the more salient 
he tries to make its individuality. The fancy of the 
observer, thoroughly acquainted with" the original, will 
be stimulated to fill out that which the artist was not 
able to reach. This is the fundamental thought which 
has guided the efforts of both of us in the drawings 
which are now laid before the reader. 

If even the photographs of well-known persons seem 
to one to be faithful portraits, while they are unrecog- 
nizable by another, it is unquestionable that in the free 



6 PREFACE. 

creation of forins, whose individuality is the dictation of 
the imagination alone, there must be scope for the grav- 
est varieties of opinion. And this will be more certainly 
the case when, as here, the original drawing cannot be 
published, only an engraved copy of it, where, however 
marked the success, there will be something of the excel- 
lence of the drawing wanting, and where, be the success 
indifferent, the best half never reaches the public eye. 

The difficulty of engraving has offered the more 
obstacles, inasmuch as the undertaking now presented 
to the public is the first one of the kind. Illustrations 
heretofore have been done either on wood or in lightly- 
engraved outlines, this style answering better the efforts 
of the idealizing German school to give a general 
characterization than to individualize closely. A course 
so entirely opposed to the one hitherto followed must 
meet many hinderances. Draftsmen and engravers have 
gallantly sought to overcome these obstacles, and many 
plates of our collection give honorable testimony that, in 
the case of the engravers, these efforts have not been in 
vain. We, at least, cherish the belief that our work need 
not fear comparison with similar undertakings out of 
Germany, and for the very reason that we have not 
copied foreign productions. The connoisseur will readily 
confess that, much as he may criticise rightfully in us, 
not only our faults but our merits are our own. 



PREFACE. 7 

Enjoying the favorable support of the public, we shall 
hope to make profitable use of the experience which we 
gain iu this work in the Goethe Gallery, which is in con- 
templation ; and shall enter upon the preparation of it 
with new courage and hope. 

Schiller's life itself exhibits such a continuous and 
unwearied struggle after perfection, as to form an illus- 
trious example for every German. We hope that it may 
be said of us that, in our attempts, we have sought to 
render it due honor. 

A few words may be permitted respecting the ex- 
planatory remarks which the author has added to the 
engravings, and for which he alone is responsible. He is 
the less able to assert that he has added any thing new 
respecting the poet, that he must frankly confess his 
ignorance of what is old and already written. It has 
always been his preference to enjoy the poet himself, 
instead of studying critics and commentators ; and where 
he has found the need of assistance, he has confined him- 
self to the admirable hints which Gervinus and Julian 
Schmidt have thrown out. It is not necessary here to 
repeat in full what he himself has reached unaided, or 
what he has received from others, since the drawing 
and the text will be found mutually explanatory and 
illustrative. 

Before this work was commenced, the author, in 



8 PREFACE. 

common, probably, with most of bis countrymen, suffered 
from tbe misfortune of not baving read, but having 
merely devoured, Schiller, in his youth— -of having 
learned his melodious verses by heart, but with very 
slight appreciation of their value. He had been en- 
tranced by only one side of Schiller's genius — the pomp 
and glory of his language, and the glowing colors with 
which he has painted an ideal world, and set it over 
against the world of reality. The man who has no mind 
in himself, has little appreciation of mind in another. 
And the author, like so many in the period of youth, 
contented himself with merely recalling certain sonorous 
sentences ; and, at last, on entering manhood, and ex- 
periencing the reaction of that period, those sentences, 
once so lofty and grand, appeared of doubtful value, and 
made him look contemptuously on the poet for years. 

The problem that Ave all have to solve is this : to take 
the ideals of youth with us into our maturer years, 
reanimate them, give the beautiful form aud the lofty 
word definiteness and meaning ; to unite the ideal and 
the actual world, so as to make the former of service to 
the latter, instead of carrying them both around in our 
consciousness alienated, the one despised and denied by 
the other, because we know not how to construct a 
bridge to bind them together. 

It needs a long and rich experience of life to make 



PREFACE. 9 

one capable of this ; to so far endow a man that he shall 
not deny the possibility of the ideal, and close his eyes 
upon it, instead of seeking and finding a divine element 
in what is human. And yet, in this very way, every 
sound nature is to come back to those ideals of youth, 
which ordinarily rest upon a solid foundation. 

The author had, for a considerable while, devoted 
himself to these studies, when the publishers of this 
work communicated to him their intention of under- 
taking the Schiller Gallery, and requested him to assume 
the task. The original plan was that the work should 
form a kind of pendant to the English works — the 
Women of the Bible and the Characters of Shakespeare, 
the German editions of which have been published by 
the same house whence the Schiller Gallery issues. The 
centennial celebration of Schiller's birth has seemed the 
most appropriate time to honor his memory by a work, 
the scope of which has hitherto had no parallel. We 
have heretofore had representations of Schiller's heroes 
and heroines, but no such collective illustrations of his 
works as would answer the demands of the present day. 

The resemblance between this volume and the two 
which have just been alluded to, is only external. The 
work is neither French nor English, but German. It 
must be a far closer study of the poet's meaning than 
any foreign work which exists, if we would truly, and 



10 PREFACE. 

with pious deference, interpret all his wealth of mean- 
ing. The author would scarcely have ventured to under- 
take a work of so much difficulty, had he not had the 
good fortune to secure the artistic cooperation of his 
richly-endowed friend Arthur von Kamberg. 

In commencing his task, and more especially in pre- 
paring the illustrative remarks, the author entered upon 
a renewed and thorough study of the poet ; and must 
confess again, as at the outset of this preface, that in 
these later readings the genius of Schiller has appeared 
grander, richer, and more powerful than ever in his 
youth ; and that these later impressions prove them- 
selves abiding. The public now receives the result of 
these studies, and it is to be presupposed that it wiU be 
most acceptable to those who come by a similar ex- 
perience into relations with Schiller. If the work is 
less acceptable to others, they need enjoy none the less 
with his immortal muse ; for it is the truest indication of 
classic works of art that they give to every one a feeling 
of lofty satisfaction ; that they offer something to every 
one, and vary their gift according to the character and 
training of each recipient. 

Munich, October, 1859. 

F. Pecht. 



LIST OF ENGRAVINGS 



PAGE 

FREDERICK SCHILLER, 15 

CHARLOTTE VON LENGEFELD, 21 



THE ROBBERS. 

CHARLES MOOR, 27 

AMELIA VON EDELREICH, 33 

FRANCIS MOOR, 39 

THE CONSPIRACY OF FIE SCO. 

FIESCO, COUNT OF LAVAG-NA, 45 

LEONORA, WIFE OF FLESCO, 51 

ANDREAS DORIA, DUKE OF GENOA, 57 

JULIA, COUNTESS DOWAGER LMPERLALI, .... 63 

LOVE AND INTRIGUE. 

FERDINAND, 69 

LOUISA MILLER, 75 

LADY MILFORD, THE PRINCE'S MISTRESS, 81 

DON CARLOS. 

PHILIP H., KLNG OF SPAIN, 85 

ELISABETH DE VALOIS, QUEEN OF SPAIN, . . . .91 

DON CARLOS, PRINCE, SON OF PHILIP, 97 



12 LIST OF ENGRAVINGS. 

TAGE 

MARQUIS DE POSA, 103 

PRINCESS EBOLI, 109 

DUKE OF ALVA, 115 

WALLENSTEIN. 

WALLENSTEIN, GENERAL OF THE IMPERIAL FORCES, . . 121 

COUNTESS TERZKY, 127 

OCTAVIO PICCOLOMINI, LIEUTENANT-GENERAL, . . .133 

MAX PICCOLOMINI, HIS SON, 139 

THEKLA, PRINCESS OF FRLEDLAND, ..... 145 

THE CAPUCHIN, 151 

GUSSIE OF BLASEWITZ, 157 

MA RY STUART. 

ELIZABETH, QUEEN OF ENGLAND, 1G3 

MART STUART, QUEEN OF SCOTS, 169 

ROBERT DUDLEY, EARL OF LEICESTER, 175 

SIR EDWARD MORTIMER, 181 

WILLIAM CECIL, LORD BURLEIGH, . . . . . .187 

THE M A IB OF ORLEANS. 

JOAN OF ARC, 193 

CHARLES VII., KING OF FRANCE, 199 

AGNES SOREL, .205 

TALBOT, THE ENGLISH GENERAL, . . . . . .211 

QUEEN ISABEL, MOTHER OF CHARLES VII., .... 217 

THE BRIDE OF MESSINA. 

DONNA ISABELLA, PRINCESS OF MESSINA, . . _ . .223 

DON MANUEL, HER SON, .229 

DON OESAR, " " 235 

BEATRICE, 241 

WILLIAM TELL. 

WILLIAM TELL, 247 

HEDWIG, WIFE OF TELL, . . . ■ . . .253 



LIST OF ENGRAVINGS. 13 

PAGE 

TELL'S SON, . 259 

ARNOLD OF MELCHTHAL, ....... 265 

BERTHA VON BRUNECK, 271 

GESSLER, GOVERNOR OP SWITZ AND URI, .... 277 

TUB, AND T. 

TURANDOT, . . . . . . . . .283 

KALAF, . . . . . . . ... .289 

DEMETRIUS. 
DEMETRIUS, .......... 295 

THE GHOST-SEER. 

THE PRINCE, 301 

THE GRECIAN MAID, .. . ... . . .307 



FREDERICK SCHILLER 



It is not the object of the folio wing lines to give a 
biographical sketch of onr most universally-beloved poet, 
but only to throw out a few hints in grasping his person- 
ality, as it is expressed in our likeness of him. The por- 
trait which we give, varies from those which are usually 
met, and leads us necessarily to the manner in which his 
genius is displayed in his face. This method is peculiar, 
not only to the likeness of the poet, but will form the 
basis of our method of treating most of the characters 
found in his works. Our space will limit us to few and 
brief remarks. 

Great and generous natures are often accustomed to 
nurture within themselves characteristics which are, ap- 
parently, directly antagonistic. This they do for the very 
reason that they are able to unite these opposite phases, 
and to reach results far beyond those granted to more 
simple souls. This is, in an eminent degree, the case with 
Schiller; and the will-power is the very kernel of his 
nature. 

It is the general custom of writers to regard Schiller 
as the representative of idealism in our poetry and Goethe 



10 FREDERICK SCHILLER. 

as tliat of realism. It is not to be denied that the former 
displays everywhere a marked tendency to idealize, and 
that this spreads splendor and nobleness over every thing 
that he executes ; bnt to us his real artistic talent appears 
to lie much more on the realistic side. With every artist 
it is important to discriminate between that which he 
desires to do and that which he really does. With the 
lower orders of minds the thing reached is of a much 
more ordinary character than the thing purposed ; with 
Schiller, on the contrary, the thing done is often better 
than the thing aimed at. As abstract ideals, his char- 
acters are often without marked personality as originally 
conceived; but, iii the elaboration, they come out quite 
different, and gain an individuality of life, which gives 
them much more value than what the poet originally 
designed. Our inventive faculty is in a measure sub- 
ject to our control, a fact hinted at even by language 
itself, one of the truest guides in psychology, to find 
out being directly connected with to find (in German, 
finden and erfindeii). In many of Schiller's characters 
there is, consequently, a certain contradiction between 
their speech and their action ; the poet now following 
his inspiration, which never misled him, and now his 
preconceived idea, which often, as in the " Bride of 
Messina," led him in entirely false directions. That, in 
the main, he followed the inspiration of composition, is 
one of the best proofs of his high poetic faculty ; all 
the more conclusive that, in his greatest passages, he 



FREDERICK SCHILLER. 17 

always does so. Schiller's often - quoted lines express 
his own view : 

" What in song shall live, 
Must not in life survive." * 

One might conclude from this — and the romantic school 
has even done so — that the essence of poetry is past, 
dead, in what has become history or myth. On the 
contrary, it consists rather in what has life, as Schiller's 
own works show, which everywhere are best when they 
lock themselves closest to the interests of his time, 
whether it be in Wallenstein painting the apotheosis of 
German chivalry, portraying in the hero a character 
such as Napoleon's rising star presented to his own 
gaze ; or in Teh, representing the struggle of a noble 
German tribe against a foreign yoke — a thought alto- 
gether too familiar to Schiller at that time ; or in the 
" Robbers," and " Love and Intrigue," inveighing against 
the social conditions of his day and land ; or in Don 
Carlos pleading the claims of cultivated men on the 
state ; everywhere his poetry contradicts and overthrows 
his own theory. His characters are taken from real 
life, and those which approximate closest to reality are 
always better than his ideals — the latter, Marquis Posa 
Verrina, Louisa Millar, Thekla, etc., cannot be compared 
in poetic merit with his portraits, such as Wallenstein, 
Tell, Octavio Piccolomini, and others. His ability in 

* " Was im Gedicht soil lehen, 
Muss im Leben untero-ehen ! " 



18' FREDERICK SCHILLER. 

picturing real life is all the more remarkable that, in 
the multiplicity of details which he constantly gives us, 
we scarcely find a hint that, like Goethe, he busied 
himself with observing real life. On the contrary, he 
overlooked it, left it behind, isolated himself from it as 
much as possible. And just as a genuine painter is 
constantly giving attention to the form and color of 
objects around him without knowing it or wishing it, 
so Schiller was constantly studying objects, and treas- 
uring them in his memory, without really wishing to 
do so. 

This unconscious gathering up of treasures, which 
his fantasy was subsequently to use, is the true mother 
of that artistic intuition so eminently displayed in 
Schiller. Above every thing else, the artist has there- 
fore sought to exhibit in his portrait the poet as we 
find him in Schiller. As the tendency to idealize is so 
prominent a feature of his muse, as there is in him some- 
thing unquestionably abstract, something alien to the 
world of experience, the poet is represented in an 
attitude rather looking inward, rather listening to the 
voice of his own inspirations than contemplating ob- 
jects around him. He has something of a seer's and 
prophet's air, he is occupied solely with what is great 
and exalted ; and, as Goethe says, so finely and fittingly 
of his deceased friend, one must seek 

" Behind him, in the empty space, 
What binds us all, the commonplace." 



FREDERICK SCHILLER. 19 

Conjoined with this prophetic gift, there is that super- 
human power of his that seizes us, and bears us away 
on the soaring pinions of his glowing enthusiasm, to a 
loftier height than any other German poet has been able 
to reach. His broad, firmly-collected brow is the seal 
of his strength and loftiness, his earnestness and depth • 
the glance of his eye shows the dreamy reverie, and 
his other features, rugged and alien, worthily complete 
his face, and out of their antagonism chime in a lofty 
harmony. 

Schiller was, above all things, a poet, but he was also, 
and we may say it with emphasis, a Suabian. And, with 
all its skill and rich endowments, with all its manly 
strength and decisiveness, this branch of the great Ger- 
man family is probably the least approachable of all — 
the most crabbed, hardest, least docile, most stubborn, 
least pliable, and most passionate. These qualities were 
doubtless observable in our Schiller ; the cross-grained, 
proud, and retiring nature, the impatience, the fierce 
glow of hate as well as of love, all worked powerfully in 
this timid, reserved, and intractable spirit. The Suabian 
peculiarities manifest themselves very clearly in the de- 
fiantly raised under-lip, the broad fixed chin, the strong- 
cheek-bones, the markedly defined features. You may 
see also the nervousness of the thinker who wrought late 
into the night ; and who was so accustomed to regard 
his body as the mere slave of his spirit, that he was 
snatched so prematurely away. 



20 FREDERICK SCHILLEE. 

This makes it clear that the personality of that 
Schiller of whom we have so many traces — red-haired, 
pale ; tall, and emaciated — is a mixture of timidity, fear, 
and even antipathy, which, nevertheless, found such a 
mighty counterpoise in the massiveness of his genius as 
to transform dislike into reverence and enthusiasm, even 
when intimacy with him was forbidden. It is a matter 
always to be joyed over, therefore, that while in Goethe 
we have the most harmonious of characters, a per- 
sonality the most brilliantly furnished both within and 
without, that any modern nation has displayed in its 
poets, we have in Schiller the most illustrious example 
of a spirit, whose own lofty nobility is able to glorify all 
that was ignoble in the form that contained it. 




'. ' ■ ■ . - i2s<?£, 



CHARLOTTE VON LENGEFELD. 



As " a blooming child, with the Graces and Joy as 
her companions," Lottie encountered the young poet, 
when, in the society of his friend Wolzogen, subse- 
quently the husband of the older sister, Caroline, he first 
visited Rudolstaclt and the Lengefeld mansion. At a 
later period, she herself says that, just like a young girl, 
little communicative in society, she was all the more 
silent in the intimate circle of her home. A cheerful- 
ness, nimbleness, and natural good -humor appear in 
every line of the first year's correspondence which 
Schiller's daughter, Baroness Gleichen - Russwurm, has 
lately presented to us ; but, at the very outset, it is 
nothing but her youthful freshness and gracefulness 
which interest us in her. 

Soon after that fleeting visit to Rudolstaclt, Schiller 
met her again in Weimar, where he felt himself de- 
cidedly drawn to her. The correspondence, now in our 
possession, arose from an interchange of books. After 
the return of the two sisters to Rudolstaclt, the corre- 
spondence was continued, and led, the next summer, to 



22 CHARLOTTE VON LENGEFELD. 

Schiller's passing several months in the neighborhood 
of Rudolstadt, where they accustomed themselves to 
Avalks and mutual visits — he to give of his intellectual 
resources, she to receive. This went on so happily, and 
with such zeal, that, in the successive letters, one can 
almost see how the spirited, bright, and yet entirely un- 
learned girl, was intellectually growing. It was in this 
period of pleasant summer-walks, amid the cheerful 
Thuringian hills, when the lovers met almost every day 
on the meadows or in the wood, that the artist has 
represented Lottie, in the fair period of first love, when 
the young man, now looking dreamily within himself, 
now rapt with enthusiasm, with the flash of genius upon 
his pale brow, poured out his spiritual wealth, and took 
captive the heart and senses of the girl just ripening into 
womanhood. Externally, the affair seemed to be exactly 
the reverse : the young, lively, and spirited girl, made 
more easy and familiar with the ways of the world 
through her intercourse with the court and the noble 
families of the neighborhood, than was the timid, sen- 
sitive poet, would seem to have attracted him, and bound 
him all the more closely to herself, inasmuch as their 
relations at that time had merely the form of simple 
friendship ; and neither Schiller nor Charlotte appears to 
have recognized a warmer feeling. It would seem that 
the older sister, Caroline, the more gifted of the two, 
would more naturally have charmed him, since, in her 
strong tendency to cultivate herself, and her ripe under- 



CHARLOTTE VON LENGEFELD. 23 

standing, he found what more closely bound him to her- 
self; but, as we never seek what we ourselves have, the 
freshness which he found in the younger gained the 
victory in his heart over the culture which he found in 
the older. Not that Lottie had not enjoyed remarkably 
fine advantages for that time ; she had read and learned 
much more than she now understood ; but knowledge 
had, as yet, wrought no effectual work upon her — it had 
not yet become a living principle ; reflection had made 
but little change in that youthful cheerfulness which 
made her view every thing in the golden morning light 
of her own warm feeling, and compelled her to idealize 
as Schiller himself did, who, at that period, went so far 
as to write of her : " A spirit like yours seeks things 
that lie in the enchanted background, in a fairer light 
than they really have ; we seldom find such people 
as you." 

Her love for the poet awoke into powerful activity 
her desire to improve herself, as soon as the winter had 
removed him again. She determined to be worthy of 
him ; and the manner in which, girl-like, she runs from 
little things to great, makes an odd impression ; in 
one letter, jumping from Schiller to Gibbon, discussing 
Christianity, leaving this to discourse of Plutarch, touch- 
ing lightly on Pompey and Caesar, turning from them to 
the Portuguese and their merits in modern geographical 
science, then bringing some new French romances under 
review, and ending with Mirabeau. 



24 CTIAKLOTTE VON LENGEFELD. 

In spite of this mosaic of subjects, however, the ripe- 
ness of her mind, in the sunshine of her love for a man 
so gifted, begius to be apparent in a multitude of fine 
and strikingly characteristic remarks and thoughts, un- 
like any thing seen in her before the earnestness of love 
brought her being to maturity. For example, she says : 
" The friendship that wants to share merely agreeable 
things is selfish ; " at another place, " The heart can 
extract something from very small materials ; the 
understanding, however, craves larger stores ; " again, 
"Habit must be revered as one of the most beneficent 
of goddesses ; " and, once more, " More is unques- 
tionably gained by imparting our ideas to others 
than by merely bearing them round ourselves, for it 
is by communicating them that they receive clearness 
and sharpness." 

And thus it went agreeably on. As her judgment ac-. 
quired correctness respecting things, it grew noticeably 
surer respecting men ; and we can well understand with 
what joy Schiller once proudly claimed this progress as 
the fruit of seeds planted by himself. In the autumn of 
1788, he entered upon his professorship of history at 
Jena. This prevented a protracted interview with Char- 
lotte the next summer ; they merely met for a few days 
at Lauchstadt, and subsequently at Weimar. A decla- 
ration now took place, and, from that time forth, their 
correspondence assumes a liveliness and warmth which 
often moves us deeply, as it presents the great poet 



CHARLOTTE VON LENGEFELD. 25 

on his most sympathetic and amiable side. And with 
Lottie, too, there now comes to the foreground a pas- 
sionate, boundless love, overshadowing all other thoughts, 
so that even the reader of her letters experiences a sen- 
sation of relief, when, at the close, he sees that the lovers 
have reached the consummation of their wishes, and 
formed that union which was to be to both the richest 
spring of unbroken happiness during the sixteen years in 
which they were to belong to each other, during all of 
which our Lottie unfolded that devoted and abiding 
loyalty and love of which only German women are 
capable in so eminent a degree. 

The obligation which the German nation owes to this 
amiable woman becomes all the more manifest, when we 
look at the change which his marriage wrought in the 
poet. Down to that time he had not rightly apprehended 
woman's nature ; all the female characters which he had 
till then conceived — with the single exception of the re- 
markably portrayed violinist's wife in " Love and In- 
trigue " — have something hard and false; they are 
figures which, in spite of all their pathos, lack the true 
warmth of life. We see that, till then, the poet had con- 
templated women only through the medium of fantasy 
or sense. From that time, on, he gives us a series of 
noble female characters. Countess Terzky, the Duchess 
of Friedland, Gustel von Blasewitz, Mary Stuart, Donna 
Isabella, Agnes Sorel, the Maid of Orleans, Hedwig, Ger- 
trude (Stauffacher's wife), can compare in life-likeness 

4 



26 CHARLOTTE VON LENGEFELD. 

with the creations of any other poet. There is in the 
relations of these women, to the men whom they loved, 
a truthfulness and a natural warmth (more especially in 
portraying the marriage relation) which, in Tell's wife, 
reaches the highest poetry ; and which can be ascribed 
to the happiness of his home, and the influence of his 
Lottie. 



CHARLES MOOR 

(The Robbers.) 



Our nature is the paper, and the world the envelope, 
which, together, constitute the perfect man. The com- 
plete personality is not merely the product of our native 
spiritual qualities and sensibilities. It is the result as 
well of the experiences which meet us in the course of 
life, the influences of the external world developing our 
personality, but, at the same time, transforming it, and 
making the result a complete character. The richest 
natures must, by the inevitable contact with life, be 
the more transformed in proportion as this contact is 
varied ; and it is a great mistake to expect of a gifted 
man that, in his fiftieth year, he shall be exactly what 
he was in his eighteenth, when his life was an unwritten 
sheet of paper, subsequently to receive its coloring, and 
to be pale and mean, or brilliant and attractive. And 
those persons in whom the influence of the external 
world produces very slight changes, and whom we 
usually speak of as characters, are generally either 
meagre natures, or deficient in life. 

In a soul as richly endowed as Schiller's was, the 
latter contingency is a thing impossible, since such a soul 



28 CnARLES MOOR. 

takes up into itself all the life of its times, lives it anew, 
and reflects it, as a diamond takes up the smallest beam 
of light, and breaks it into a thousand rays, while a 
whole world of sunshine can impart no splendor to the 
pebble. Although the attrition of the outer world brings 
its true value to the gem, and makes it continually more 
brilliant, it cannot change the worth of the pebble in the 
least ; it can reduce its size, break it into fragments, but 
never enhance its value. Nor does it do so to frame it 
in costliest gold, while such a setting is recognized as 
simply due to the jewel. 

It is, therefore, not to be wondered at, if the per- 
sonality -of the poet appears to us quite different at the 
outset of his life from what he was when his genius had 
matured and purified by the experiences of a rich inner 
and outer life. As his genius was the grandest and most 
awe-inspiring when it had advanced victoriously through 
life, it is a study all the more interesting to trace it 
back to its first work of power, as we find it in " The 
Robbers." Just as in the Bible, so in Schiller's play, the 
first quality that strikes us is power. In " The Robbers/' 
we witness a struggle with the whole order of the world, 
carried on in the most energetic manner, and to just such 
an extent as this world was within the sphere of the 
poet's knowledge. That it was, at best, but a frag- 
mentary acquaintance with the world ; that Charles, 
with his great nature ; could enter upon no better work 
than attacking defiantly an " ink-shedding age," going 



CHARLES "MOOR. 29 

into the forests, becoming a robber-chief, and having 
melees with the police ; this child-like want of relation 
between what was in his thought and the means which 
he took to reach his end ; this shows ns better than 
every thing how such fruit could ripen on the dusty 
seats of the Charles School at Stuttgart. 

The irresistible effect which he wrought upon the 
youth of that time is explained by the extraordinary 
genius which the young poet expended in the effort to 
reach his odd goal. If Charles, in his stupid hunting-down 
of corpulent parsons and rich farmers, is like that giant 
who undertook to throw millstones to Spatzen ; if he 
shows us in this, more distinctly than in any thing else, 
the horizon of the poet, which at that time extended 
only from Stuttgart to Ludwigsburg, he teaches us to 
comprehend the amazement which must have seized the 
cosmopolitan Goethe, as he looked upon this untram- 
melled production of the young man's genius, and the 
delight of all the youth, whose very soul was pictured 
in this wild life. And Charles differs merely from the 
youth of his time, that he was really able to hurl the 
millstones, and that he came soon enough to a confession 
of the folly with which he began his course. He says 
of himself: 

" There lie stands, poor fool ! abashed and disgraced in the sight of Heaven ; 
the boy that presumed to wield Jove's thunder, and overthrew pigmies when he 
should have crushed Titans." 

Charles, in whom the poet draws his own portrait as 



30 CHARLES MOOE. 

nowhere else, is, in what he says of his inner life, full 
already of that lofty spirit, that scorn for every thing 
common and low, that remained the most marked char- 
acteristic of Schiller's Muse, unchanged amid all his later 
transformations ; and when the camp-life of the students 
and the robbers is subsequently portrayed in detail, there 
is brought into play a plastic power, which graves it all 
upon the memory, and makes it live. In spite of the 
continued blame with which we must visit all Charles's 
errors, when we are not compelled to smile at them, the 
heroic element in his character always takes us captive. 
In his gloomy humor, he sees only the shaded side of 
things, but this most clearly, as we learn from his 
genuinely student-life portrayal of the age, as well 
as from his own expression, that " the law never 
makes a great man." But that great men are ap- 
pointed to make laws, not to overthrow them — this, 
twenty years and a fiery soul are not so well able to 
discern ! 

Inferior poets tell us that their hero is gifted, grand, 
imposing, even while he is doing very ordinary things ; 
but Schiller's Charles is, to a certain extent, really so ; in 
all that he says, there are traces of a remarkable man, in 
spite of his exaggerated feeling, his errors ; even in spite 
of the sweltering pathos into which he is falling every 
minute. 

Although the poet makes him fully confess his 
errors — 



CHARLES MOOR. 31 

" Oh, fool that I was, to fancy that I could amend the world by misdeeds, and 
maintain law by lawlessness ! I called it vengeance and equity ; I presumed, O 
Providence, upon whetting the notches of Thy sword, and repairing Thy par- 
tialities ; but — oh, vain trifling ! — here I stand upon the brink of a fearful life, and 
learn with wailing and gnashing of teeth that two men like myself could ruin the 
whole edifice of the moral world. Pardon ! pardon the boy who sought to fore- 
stall Thee ; to Thee alone belongeth vengeance. Thou needest not the hand of 
man! But it is not in my power to recall the past. That which is ruin remains 
ruin ; what I have thrown down will never more rise up again. Yet one thing is 
left me, whereby I may atone to the offended majesty of the law, and restore the 
order which I have violated " — 

and so effects an undoing of the cruelties into which 
he had been hurried, step by step, through the fierce 
violence of youth ; yet we fear it is in this form a 
subsequent addition, a reflection put into the mouth 
of Charles by the poet when he revised the piece. 

For the purposes of the artist, there are sufficient 
hints given in the play. At the very outset, he is repre- 
sented as a lofty, proud, and massive figure ; and, on his 
subsequent visit to the castle of his fathers, Francis 
recognizes him by his wild, sun-burnt countenance, his 
long neck, his black, flashing eyes, and the dark, bushy 
eyebrows that overhang them. The scene in which 
we have represented him is the celebrated monologue, 
where, returning from his interview with Amelia, he 
thinks, in despair, of suicide, and whispers to himself: 

" If the paltry pressure of this paltry thing " (putting a pistol to his head) 
" makes the wise man and the fool, the coward and the brave, the noble and 
the villain, equal" . . . 



32 CHAELES MOOB. 

If Charles commits all possible cruelties, and reasons 
sentimentally on them afterward, the discrepancy be- 
tween his feelings and his actions is certainly not to 
be solved ; it lay in the mind of the poet, who wanted 
to draw a character different from himself, and yet 
transferred his own feelings and thoughts to his poetic 
creation. 




ypTZtZsCtt-O^? 



AMELIA. 

{The Robbers.) 

Is a man able to portray what he has never known ? 
If he cannot, we need not wonder if the youth, from the 
Charles School, was unable to give in his first work her 
true tint to the only female figure introduced ; if he does 
not represent her so faithfully as he does the wild com- 
panions of his youth — Roller, Schweizer, Spiegelberg, 
and others, whom he portrayed from life. 

In Charles, the poet has painted himself rising in 
burning indignation against the order of things around 
him, a legalized condition of affairs that had settled into 
dead mechanical form. In Amelia, on the other hand, 
whose features could hardly have been taken from 
a living original, we can see what ideas he had of 
noble women before he knew them In a man of his 
greatness, it is worth the trouble to examine the some- 
what indistinct and hastily-drawn features which he 
gives her. 

A poor niece of the elder Moor, early orphaned, she 
was educated in his house, and grew up on equal footing 
with the two brothers. It was but natural, therefore, 



34 AMELIA. 

that, under these circumstances, her glowing, love-craving 
heart turned to the splendid character brought before 
her in the older brother. Even the envious Francis 
says of him : 

" Here, here Charles reigned sole monarch, like a god within his temple ; ho 
stood before thee, waking ; he filled thy imagination, dreaming ; the whole creation 
seemed to thee to centre in Charles, and to reflect him alone ; it gave thee no 
other echo hut of him." 

In this all- victorious love, her enthusiastic soul goes 
wholly out to him, clings to him with unshakable 
fidelity, despite all the ' calumnies of the brother. She 
sees through these sooner than does the credulous 
father ; and steadfastly and courageously defends her 
lover. Love, that transforms us all, gives her, too, 
spirit and strength, makes her a heroine, teaches her to 
penetrate what is cunning, and despise what is base ; 
makes her know the round of all sensations, from those 
which are most blessed to those most fraught with 
death ; and gives her a wealth of experience that she 
had scarcely known before, for love is the school-mistress 
of woman. 

This spirit, inspired by love, the timid girl preserves, 
and, with it, gallantly confronts the insidious brother, to 
whom, notwithstanding he holds her fate in his hand, 
she displays her scorn everywhere, and even tears the 
dagger from him when he persecutes her with his 
caresses, and puts the coward to flight. This touch is 
all the more fine and true, in that it makes more clear 



AMELIA. 35 

to us the passionate desire of the cold Francis for her ; 
for a woman of decision must have had a special charm 
for a feeble-hearted spendthrift like himself; a weak 
woman Francis would have recklessly misused and 
trodden under foot. Now, he can do no more than 
break her heart by the news of Charles's death, brought 
by Hermann, who had been tampered with by Francis, 
and used merely as a tool. The rich count cannot shake 
her fidelity. It is, however, brought into a state of 
rarest perplexity when her lover, after years of separa- 
tion, appears in the disguise of a stranger, and at once 
takes her heart captive ; there being something in his 
bearing which recalls the delightful days, long ago past, 
with Charles. The scene in which the artist has repre- 
sented her, is where she conducts the stranger to the 
portrait-gallery of her ancestors, sunk in painful recol- 
lections of her old happiness, so wonderfully connected 
with the experience of the present moment, as she shows 
Charles's likeness to the stranger, and asks a solution of 
the riddle written in his face. He has conceived of 
Amelia as a slim, tall figure, with great, dark, enthusiastic 
eyes, full lips, indicative of longing and tenderness, a lofty 
brow quivering Avith pain ; and, putting the bitter ques- 
tion to fate — why all the charm of her life must be with- 
drawn. Her own words express best what she would say : 

" Gone ! as our best joys perish. Whatever lives, lives to die in sorrow. 
We engage our hearts, and grasp after the things of this world, only to undergo 
the pang of losing them." 



36 AMELIA. 

The hot eagerness, exaggeration, reckless passion 
which breathes through all that Schiller wrote, during 
this first period, pulsates also in Amelia as often— and 
that is almost always — as she thinks of her love, whether 
lamenting him, whom she believes to be dead, or sur- 
rendering herself to the recollection of past days : 

" His warm embrace — oh, ravishing delight ! 
With heart to heart the fiery pulses dance — 
Our every sense wrapped in ecstatic night, 
Our souls in blissful harmony entranced. 

He's gone ! forever gone ! Alas ! in vain 
My bleeding heart in bitter anguish sighs ; 
To me is left alone this world of pain, 
And mortal life in hopeless sorrow dies." 

or whether, with a feeling of dread, she at last discloses 
these sensations to the stranger : 

" ' You are in tears, Amelia ? ' these were his very words — and spoken with 
such expression — such a voice ! Oh ! it summoned up a thousand dear remem- 
brances ! — scenes of past delight, as in my youthful days of happiness, my 
golden spring-tide of love. The nightingales sang again with the same sweetness, 
the flowers breathed the same delicious fragrance as when I used to hang 
enraptured on his neck. Ha ! false, perfidious heart ! dost thou seek thus artfully 
to veil thy perjury ? " 

Incredible as this not recognizing him is, inasmuch 
as directly after she knows him at once in the forest, 
there is at least more consistency in her conduct than 
in Charles, who, in every situation, merely obeys the 
impulse of the moment, while she never forgets her 



AMELIA. 37 

passion — always speaks and acts conformably to it ; in 
her last interview, even wishing to die in her rapture : 

" I have Mm ; O ye stars, I have him ! His forever ; he forever, ever mine ! 

ye Heavenly Powers, support me in this ecstasy of bliss, lest I sink beneath 
its weight ! 

" Charles. Tear her from my neck ! kill her ! kill him, kill me, yourselves, 
everybody ! Let the whole world perish ! [About to rush off. 

'.' Amelia. Whither? What? Love! Eternity! Happiness! Never-ending joys ! 
and thou wouldst fly ? 

" Charles. Away ! away ! most unfortunate of brides. Sec with thine own 
eyes ; ask and hear it with thine own ears ! Most miserable of fathers ! Let 
me escape hence forever ! 

"Amelia. Support me ! For Heaven's sake, support me ! It is growing 
dark before my eyes ! He flies ! " 

or when, seized with horror at his and her condition, 
she begs her death at his hands : 

" Oh ! for Heaven's sake ! By all that is merciful ! I ask no longer for love. 

1 know that our stars fly from each other in opposition. Death is all I ask." 




Jt<zt2 Is sculp 



^7^2>9tOc/ <Z2^yC^r^t^P 



FRANCIS MOOR. 

(The Bobbers.) 

As the "cold, dry, wooden" Francis, his own father 
speaks of the venomous reptile, whose fearful character 
will probably always be regarded as one of the greatest 
creations of our poet. This appellation seems to have 
become proverbially common in the Moor mansion, to 
indicate the younger of the two sons, before his char- 
acter was better known. 

We see, in the very first scene, that he was lacking 
neither in wit nor in wickedness — least of all in reflective- 
ness ; his inclination to sophistry and craft is his most 
marked characteristic ; he has a strong philosophic 
bend, and everywhere indicates his close acquaintance 
with the materialistic philosophy of the seventeenth and 
eighteenth centuries ; he has appropriated its entire 
method, and used it in justification of his horrible 
wishes. 

Men are, confessedly, more inclined to envy the bril- 
liant external qualities of others than their internal 
traits. The existence of these they find it more con- 



40 FRANCIS MOOR. 

venient to deny. The striking splendor of the older 
brother's nature, exerting, as it did, a magic charm over 
every one, filled the younger with such a hatred of 
nature, which seemed, so neglectful of him, as to make 
him forget even the ties of blood. This wild rebellion 
against nature becomes the ground-thought of his being, 
and he frankly confesses it when he says : 

" No small cause have I for being dissatisfied with Dame Nature, and, by 
mine honor, I will have amends. Why has she heaped on me this burden of 
deformity? on me esrjeeially, just as if she had spawned me from her refuse! 
Why to me, in particular, this snub of the Laplander, these Negro lips, these 
Hottentot eyes ? " 

The artist has only to complete the hints which are 
given here, to perfect the representation of Francis, who 
represents himself with so little flattery; he must give 
him that knavish, externally composed, inwardly pas- 
sionate appearance ; he must indicate that tendency to 
reflect, develop the hidden, secret brooding of his char- 
acter, as these qualities manifest themselves throughout 
the play. His is the nature of a recluse ; let his wishes 
and passions be of the wildest kind, his nervous temper- 
ament always leaves him ia the lurch when he needs 
courage. Cowardice and cruelty are cousins which 
almost always appear together, and this is the case 
with Francis. He is a pale, red-haired, overgrown 
youngster, with thin, pale lips, who never can look one 
in the face ; a tall young man of twenty, with an un- 
formed, boyish face, in which only the forehead is broad 






FRANCIS MOOE. 41 

and powerful, the rest weak and incomplete. Francis is 
vain, and therefore richly clothed, although the incessant 
agitation going on within him makes him neglectful of 
his toilet. Even in his wildest passion, he must maintain 
a distinguished appearance ; the nest-bird of an old 
family cannot avoid the delicate and effeminate conven- 
tionalities of life. Be he lacking in spirit, there is no 
want of mind, acumen, and fancy ; and even where he 
has not at hand all the resources he needs, his active 
imagination is perpetually causing him to exaggerate his 
strength : 

" Let those swim who can, the heavy may sink. To me she gave naught 
else ; and how to make the best use of my endowment is my present business. 
Men's natural rights are equal ; claim is met by claim, effort by effort, and force by 
force. Eight is with the strongest ; the limits of our power constitute our laws." 

The foundation of his education, the materialistic 
philosophy of the eighteenth century, displays itself 
particularly in all his reasonings on the conscience : 

"Honor! truly a very convenient coin, which those who know how to pass 
it may lay out to very good advantage. Conscience ! oh, yes, a useful scarecrow 
to frighten sparrows away from cherry-trees ; it is something like a fairly- written 
bill of exchange, with which your bankrupt merchant staves off the evil day. 

" Then, courage, and onward ! The man who fears nothing is as powerful as he 
who is feared by everybody." 

In like manner, where he makes merry with the ties 
of blood : 

" He is thy father ! He gave thee life ; thou art his flesh and blood, and there- 
fore he must be sacred to thee. Again a most inconsequential deduction. Do I 
then owe him thanks for his affection ? Why, what is it but a piece of vanity, the 



42 FRANCIS MOOR. 

besetting sin of the artist 'who admires his own works, however hideous they may 
be ? Look you ! this is the whole juggle wrapped up in a mystic veil, to work on 
our fears ; and shall I, too, be fooled like an infant ? " 

Or where he justifies the murder of his father : 

" Is my soaring spirit to be chained down to the snail's pace of matter ? 
To blow out a wick that is already flickering upon its last drop of oil — 'tis 
nothing more." 

Thinking so lightly of the murder of his own father, 
of course that of his brother is the merest trifle : 

" A happy journey to you, brother! The spleeny, gouty moralist of a conscience 
may trouble old usurers on their death-bed ; he will never gaiu audience with me." 

To complete the portrait, there is only wanting sen- 
suality, since this and cruelty always go together. 

The closing scenes, in which the despised conscience 
at last maintains its rights, and scourges the poor Francis, 
are of fearful power, and develop with the utmost clear- 
ness the whole wealth of Schiller's genius. After seeing 
this abandoned man seek all the arguments to build the 
superstructure of his crime upon, it thrills us to witness 
his own destruction beneath the crumbling ruins of his 
own edifice : 

" Vulgar prejudice, mere superstition ! It has not yet been proved that the past 
is not past and forgotten, or that there is an Eye above this earth. To die ! Why 
docs that word frighten me thus ? To give an account to the Avenger there, above 
the stars! And if He should be just — the wail of orphans and widows, of the. 
oppressed and tormented, ascending to His ears, and He bo just? Why have they 
been afflicted, and why have I been permitted to trample upon them ? 

" There is no God. I am well aware that those who have come ofl* short in this 
world, look forward to eternity ; but they will be sadly disappointed. I have always 



FRANCIS MOOR. 43 

read that our whole being is nothing more than a blood-spring, and that with 
its last drop mind and thought dissolve into nothing. But I do not wish to be 
immortal. Let them be so that like. I have no wish to hinder them. I will force 
Him to annihilate me. I will so provoke His fury that He may utterly destroy me. 
Tell me which are the greatest sins, which excite Him to the utmost wrath. 

" Listen to my prayer, God in heaven ! It is the first time ; it shall never 
happen again. Hear me, God in heaven. O Lord, I have been no common 
murderer ; I have been guilty of no petty crimes, gracious Lord ; I cannot pray. 
Here ! and here [striking his breast and his forehead] ! all is so void— so barren ! 
[Hises from his knees.'] No, I will not pray. Heaven shall not have that triumph 
nor hell that pastime." 

This gradual increase of the horror of death is painted 
with all the more power, from the very psychological 
truthfulness of the monster strangling himself out of the 
very fear of death. 



FIESCO. 

{The Conspiracy of Fiesco.) 

The three earliest plays of Schiller grow out of a 
reaction against the existing order of things ; they 
are characterized by a revolutionary spirit. In " The 
Robbers," where society is attacked, this has the freest 
play. In " Fiesco," it limits itself to revolt against the 
State ; in " Love and Intrigue," it has for its object 
differences in social rank. 

Fiesco was intended to be a " republican tragedy ; " 
in it Schiller wanted to make an apotheosis of that form 
of government. Under his hands, however, it became 
something quite different — almost the reverse ; for the 
most of the characters which he portrays — Gianettino 
Boria, the Moor, Sacco, Calcagno — are nothing but 
adopted citizens of a republic ; and even their preferred 
representative, Verrina, with his cold, empty, conven- 
tional Roman spirit, is not able to make their possi- 
bility intelligible to us ; in short, the poet's genius, while 
instinctively grasping what is true, was not sufficiently 
acquainted with the world to insure correctness. There 



46 FIESCO. 

is, in the play, many a reminder of Coriolanus, Julius 
Caesar, Emilia, Galotti ; Julia, Yerrina, and the Moor, are 
old acquaintances. 

Original as Fiesco himself is, even in what we must 
regard as misconceived, we are compelled to recognize 
everywhere the lion's claw. How perfect are the 
popular scenes ! How extremely rich in invention, in 
unexpected incidents, in thrilling, captivating passages, 
the whole play ! How happily, and with what a genial 
instinct, is the national coloring brought to light in 
the hero ! 

Fiesco is wholly an Italian, an aristocrat, and a 
politician. He has his nation's fluency, and love of 
talk ; he has the craft and secrecy, the presence of mind, 
and quick perception, of his countrymen ; colossal and 
imposing in character, he has the immoderate pride of 
the genuine aristocrat, and a little vanity in the enjoy- 
ment of his own brilliant personal qualities. The bound- 
less ambition which consumes him is conjoined with a 
love of intrigue, but, at the same time, with so much 
scorn of danger, as to win our interest and Sympathy. 

The most remarkable trait of the character is, how- 
ever, the manner in which the young poet brings political 
affairs to light in Fiesco ; we have an instance of this in 
the scene where the artist represents him in his interview 
with the citizens : 

" The government was democratical, every thing was subjected to a majority. 
The cowards were more numerous than the brave. Numbers prevailed." 



F I E S C O . 47 

Swarthy, with cunning, penetrating, snake-like eyes ; 
slim and tall, flexible and agile as a panther ; especially 
characteristic is his imposing bearing, which affects all, 
winning for him the hearts of women as well as of the 
people ; in short, of all who want to be captivated, not 
convinced ; and not, without truth, can he say of himself, 
" The blind of Genoa know my step." The mysterious 
background, that impenetrability of his, which all the 
women, as well as the statesmen, recognize in him, 
increases his power ; for, like every hidden thing, it only 
creates an eager curiosity. It does not speak well for 
human nature, but it is true, notwithstanding, that open 
spirits, secure in their own good intent, do not, however 
gifted, exert that influence on the masses which cunning 
politicians wield. At the foundation of this there may be 
a true instinct, that with all the ability of these straight- 
forward souls to comprehend large plans, they may not 
be able to bring them to completion, since the doing of 
all great deeds is veiled from the world. 

But that which especially charms us in Fiesco is the 
richness and inexhaustibility of his nature. His culture, 
spirit, manly beauty, nimble wit and grace, fire and 
courage— these are all united in him, charming not only 
the weak and susceptible, but showing those of keen 
perceptions that he was a man called to high deeds. 

The individuality of his nature appears most remark- 
ably in his humorous relations to the Moor, since there 
he moves the freest. The Moor is a droll rascal; and 



48 F I E S C . 

gifted men like Fiesco are often captivated by wit. This 
appears strikingly in tlie beginning of their acquaintance, 
where the Moor leads off with the assertion that he is 
an honorable man, an assurance that becomes suspicious 
the oftener it is repeated. It is characteristic of the 
Moor that he is willing to be called a knave, but not 
a blockhead ; and this draws Fiesco to him. Their 
relations are also indicated by Fiesco's reply, when a 
Jesuit said that a fox lay disguised there in sheep's 
clothing : " One fox smells out another." The cavalier 
in Fiesco is expressed, when, speaking of his name, 
he said : 

"Blockhead ! that, name is as easy to be remembered as it was difficult to 
achieve. Has Genoa more such names than one ? " 

Or in his vexation that he must be praised by a knave, 
he breaks out into the sentence now classical : 

" The Moor has done his work. The Moor may go." 

Such an expression would easily please a youthful 
poet. 

Fiesco's relation to Verrina is very finely conceived. 
As a riper, larger, more richly - endowed nature, he 
towers far above him ; and yet that unbending strength 
of character awes him, because he feels that his more 
elastic constitution has no power against it. They love 
each other, because each has what the other wants ; yet, 
in this feeling, Fiesco is, perhaps, the more truthful and 
noble, because with him this sentiment springs from 



F I E S C O . 49 

genuine regard ; while, in Verrina, it has its basis in 
hope and admiration. 

Here, it must be confessed, we come to the goal of 
our admiration, and are compelled to confess that the 
execution is not equal to the conception. Especially 
open to criticism is Fiesco's relation to the two women 
who love him, the heartlessness with which he treats 
them both, his brutality to Julia Imperiali, his calculated 
coldness to Leonore. The tortuous character of his 
political dialectics stands in wonderful contrast to the 
conduct which is assumed to grow from his reasoning. 
To what purpose does Fiesco represent to himself that 
shame diminishes with the increase of sin, and that it 
is an act of unparalleled greatness to steal a crown, 
although he can quietly confess to* himself that the 
Genoese are no republicans, and that he is the man 
who should bo at their head ? Not less repellant is the 
braggart tone that here and there breaks out, smacking 
altogether too much of student's renowning, and strongly 
contrasted with the great delicacy and grace which lie 
commonly displays. These inequalities characterize the 
transition period in which the poet then was ; there is 
insecurity in the artistic use of ah his materials. In 
" Love and Intrigue " it came, if possible, more promi- 
nently into view, to disappear in " Don Carlos," before his 
well-won skill. The weakness, in handling his theme, 
appears particularly in the fifth act, which is decidedly 

inferior to those preceding it. It awakens sensations 

i 



50 F I E S C . 

of extremely varied character ; and is all the less satis- 
factory from the fact, that in it the poet dropped what 
is probable, although elsewhere, with all his wealth of 
invention, he clung to it. A pathos carried even to 
wearisome lengths blinds us to his noble style, whose 
suggestiveness and power charm us even in earlier 
portions of the same play. 



LEONORA. 

{The Conspiracy of Fiesco.) 

Although it is not to be denied that the characters of 
" Fiesco " have something of exaggeration in almost every 
one of them, that they partake of the transcendentalism 
of youth, and, at times, even of its want of moderation 
and its crudeness, yet this reproach can be brought least 
of aU against Countess Lavagna, in whom the young poet 
has, for the first time, succeeded in portraying a woman 
who awakes our warmest interest. She is a sweet, 
gentle, and yet passionate creation, whoUy given to 
tenderness ; and yet, in her bitterest grief, throwing it 
off, out of fear that the sight of her sorrow may occa- 
sion one sad moment to her adored husband. Fiesco 
was her first love — her whole heaven lay in him, and 
she rejoiced ever in her triumph in having conquered 
him : 

" A blooming Apollo, blending the manly beauty of Antinous ! Such was bis 
noble and majestic deportment, as if tbe illustrious state of Genoa rested alone 
upon bis youthful shoulders. . . . Ah ! Arabella, bow we devoured those loots ! 
With what anxious envy did every one count those directed to her companions ! 
They fell among us like the golden apple of discord ; tender eyes burned 



52 LEONORA. 

fiercely, soft bosoms beat tumultuously ; jealousy burst asunder all our bonds of 
friendship. 

"And now to call him mine! Giddy, wondrous fortune! To call the pride 
of Genoa mine ! He who from the chisel of the exhaustless artist, Nature, sprang 
forth all perfect, combining every virtue of his sex in the most perfect union ! " . . . 

and now, married but a brief half-year, she must con- 
template the possibility of losing this priceless possession ; 
in her own house she sees the man of her heart trifling 
in wanton gallantry with another, and heaping atten- 
tions upon her, which increase her jealousy tenfold. 
From the conversation between Calcagno and Sacco, we 
learn how the world looked upon her rigid code of 
morals, and the relation in which her husband stood to 
Imperiali : 

" Calcagno. They say she is a pattern of the strictest virtue. 

'• Sacco. They lie ! She is the whole volume on that insipid text, Calcagno ; 
thou must choose one or the other — either to give up thy heart or thy profession. 

" Calcagno. The count is faithless to her; and of all the arts that may seduce a 
woman, the subtlest is jealousy. A plot against the Dorias will, at the same time, 
occirpy the count, and give me easy access to his house. Thus, while the shepherd 
guards against the wolf, the fox shall make havoc of the poultry." 

While we are learning the plans of the debauchee 
with reference to her, we see, at the same time, out of 
what pitiful material the stubborn Verrina purposes to 
construct the edifice of a Roman republic of the elder 
time. 

The artist has represented Leonora in the first scene, 
where her whole character comes most distinctly into 
view ; he has portrayed her enthusiasm for her husband, 



LEONORA. 53 

and the elegiac thrill that rims through her whole frame 
when, tearing off the mask, she throws herself into the 
chair, and yet is able to find scarcely any thing hut 
words of admiration for him. 

But if she has no weapons save tears against him 
whom she loves, yet she is too much a woman, she has 
too much spirit, not to find the most crushing words to 
hurl at her hated rival ; she listens to Julia scarcely two 
minutes, before distinctly seeing that Fiesco cannot love 
such a woman : 

" Congratulate ine, girl ! It is impossible I can have lost rny Fiesco ; or, if 
I have, the loss must be but trifling." 

She replies with a sharpness which stood more at 
the command of women of her stamp than at that of 
most men : 

" Poor husband ! Here, a blooming beauty smiles upon him ; there, he is 
nauseated by a peevish sensibility. Signora, signora, for God's sake, consider; if 
he have not lost his understanding, which "will he choose ? 

"Leonora. You, madame, if he has lost it." 

But if she publicly admits the victory of her rival, if 
she relinquishes her claim to her lover, yet the mere view 
of his medallion in Julia's hands brings her completely 
to herself again, and shows that her love has not been 
lessened. 

Pain embitters and despoils common natures ; higher 
ones it exalts. Our Leonora belongs to the last, and 
therefore Calcagno finds, exactly at the instant that seems 



54 LEONORA. 

most favorable to him, that he had misled himself in 
reckoning upon her undeception : 

" I understand thee — thou thoughtest my wounded pride would plead in thy 
behalf. Thou didst not know that she who loves Fiesco feels even the pang, that 
rends her heart, ennobling. Begone ! Fiesco's perfidy will not make Calcagno rise 
in my esteem ; but will lower humanity." 

The almost idolatrous love with which Leonora is 
filled appears everywhere, but most of all in the turbulent 
flow and reflow of feeling; in that " joyful, sorrowful, 
and thoughtful" state, which makes the wife of seven 
months blush like a timid girl, when the waiting-woman 
brings her husband's greetings to her ; but, in the next 
moment, her doubts return ; she will abandon him, she 
will load him with reproaches ; and yet she cannot go 
further than to utter a gentle lament : 

" To be your wife was more than I deserved, but she who was your wife 
deserved at least respect. How bitter is the tongue of Calumny ! How the wives 
and maidens of Genoa now look down upon me! 'See,' they say, 'how droops 
the haughty one, whose vanity aspired to Fiesco ! ' " 

In saying, so tenderly and touchingly, that she can 
never hate him, she only proves herself to be of Glerman 
birth. Had Schiller known the women of Italy, he would 
scarcely have represented her as comforting herself so 
easily ; he would hardly have put into the mouth of an 
Italian wife the words : 

" He directs, and I obey. Why should I fear ? And yet I tremble, Arabella, 
and my heart beats fearfully with apprehension. For Heaven's sake, damsels, do 
not leave me ! " 



LEONORA. 55 

German, too, is the touch where, after Fiesco had 
procured for her completest triumph over her rival, 
Leonora pleads in her behalf, instead of enjoying her 
downfall ; German, too, her jealousy of her husband's 
authority : 

" Here is no choice but evil. Unless lie gain the ducal power, Fiesco perishes. 
If I embrace the duke, I lose my husband." 

And, with a fine instinct for her own happiness, she 
becomes a republican, because she feels at once that if 
she does not lose her husband on the way to the throne, 
she will surely lose him on the throne itself. But when 
the contest has once broken out, she has no longer a 
thought except of her love ; the fear of the woman is 
utterly extinguished by the power of her passion : 

" No — my hero shall embrace a heroine." 

At his side she will either conquer or die. The last is 
her fate. Such boundless, overwhelming feeling, while 
at the side of a husband, not now able to reciprocate it 
wholly, must lead to tragic results ; but that she should 
be murdered by Fiesco himself, while in her fatal dis- 
guise, is needless cruelty, which tortures our feelings, 
and which, probably, rather springs from misused Shake- 
spearian reminiscences, than from Schiller's own heart. 




■9Ztz4-e<?z £ = - 



ANDREW DORIA. 

[The Conspiracy of Fiesco.) 

By freedom, youth generally understands license, 
immoderation, or a kind of good - natured anarchy, 
whereas it really consists in the absence of all arbitrary 
authority, and in voluntary subjection to organic laws, 
whether of the State or of art. 

The progress which Schiller made in advancing from 
the monstrous figures of " The Robbers " to an historical 
theme is, therefore, unquestionable, since he was com- 
pelled to draw his characters with a firmer hand, 
restrain his luxuriant fancy, give them a local coloring, 
keep them within natural limits, and so, step by step, 
mature his most perfect works. It is true " Fiesco " is a 
first attempt to accommodate himself to the demands of 
historical material ; and, on the whole, his success has 
not been great. There is the same wildness as, if not 
a greater than, that which repels us in " The Robbers," 
and yet there is a lack of that creative power that we 
find in the earlier play. Prom the roughness that was 
natural to his theme, we often come to a hollow pathos, 



58 ANDREW DO EI A. 

like the imitated ostensibly old Roman republicanism of 
the play — a thing that has no real place in the world, 
because there is nothing of it ; it has no body ; it is a 
mere phantom — a sham. Its representative, Verrina, 
with all his wild and genuine energy, yet from a want 
of all positive ideas, insists upon really nothing ; he 
continually cries "freedom," but he gives us no explana- 
tion of the sense which he ascribes to this very indefinite 
word. Yerrina's conventional Roman republicanism un- 
questionably indicates the horizon of the fiery poet at 
that time; and it is extremely interesting to trace the 
formlessness of the political ideas in his first three plays, 
the increase of definiteness and exactness in " Don Carlos," 
and, at last, their complete wholeness in " Teh." What a 
difference in the mode of treatment, while the same 
effort to reach the truth lies at the basis of all ! what 
noble wisdom in the words of the dying Attinghausen, 
and the demands of the Swiss peasantry, compared with 
the chaotic confusion in " Fiesco ! " 

The want of culture, which he later so completely 
filled in his " Don Carlos " and " Tell," once granted, we 
are compensated partly by the dramatic power displayed 
in the whole treatment of the theme — partly by the 
majestic greatness of some of his characters. To endow 
a figure with greatness of soul, and yet to preserve its 
individuality, is the work of an artist who is himself 
great. That Schiller could do this in Andrew Doria, and 
that, too, with a few master-strokes, speaks more loudly in 



ANDREW DOR I A. 5 9 

favor of his genuine artistic skill than all the rest of the 
play. Men do not recognize greatness of soul so much 
directly, as in comparing man with man, and in noticing 
the magical influence that it works. This influence of 
the old hero is everywhere displayed with the greatest 
delicacy in the play; everywhere we meet the respect 
that is paid him — either in the form of timidity or 
'reverence. Thus, Leonora herself, that fine womanly 
nature, says, at the very moment when she dreams and 
wishes for the downfall of his family, that it is super- 
fluous for him to be good, for lie is gentle, and, at the 
same time, great. Doria is always the first thought in 
the mind of every man ; whether with reverence or hate, 
they all must think of him. Fiesco calls his gentleness 
more dreadful than the defiance of his nephew ; Yerrina 
calls his chains silken ones ; addresses the most glowing 
panegyric to him, and sharply discriminates between 
good statesmanship and that evil kingcraft that, under 
all circumstances, requires restraint. When Doria him- 
self speaks, his first thought is of justice ; his second 
of love for the state. In reproaching his nephew for 
seeking to destroy his country, he gives him, in ten 
words, a very sound lesson in politics, although he 
discloses to us a weakness that we do not find amiss in 
him — a too great love for his kinsmen ; a quality re- 
pugnant to us in men without merit ; and yet, regarded 
as a sign of goodness of heart — a touching quality in an 
old hero. The greatness of his character comes first into 



60 ANDREW DOEIA. 

view in the manner in which he demeans himself in time 
of danger, and disarms his adversary by magnanimity, 
when he says to Fiesco : 

" Lavagna, your fate resembles mine ; benevolence is rewarded with ingratitude. 
The Moor informs me of a plot ; I send him back to you in chains, and shall sleep 
to-night without a guard." 

The tumult having broken out, and the adversary 
not being willing to be outwitted, but warning him to' 
fly, yet without allowing Doria to suspect that Fiesco 
was he who gave this counsel, Andrew answers calmly : 

" Fiesco bas a noble mind ; I never injured bim, and be will not betray me. 

" Fiesco. Fiesco bas a noble mind, and yet betrays thee. He gives thee proof 
of both. 

" Andrew. There is a guard which would defy Fiesco's power, unless he led 
against them legions of spirits. 

" Fiesco [scornfully]. That guard I should be glad to see, to dispatch it with a 
message for eternity. 

" Andrew [m an elevated manner]. Vain scoffer, knowest thou not that Andrew 
has seen his eightieth year, and that Genoa, beneath bis rule, is happy ? " 

His lofty confidence, which springs from a good 
conscience, is, nevertheless, betrayed; yet, in his grief 
over the deception, he remains none the less imposing ; 
he thrills us, whether he says to the German body-guard : 

" Hark ! Germans, hark ! These are the Genoese, whose chains I broke. Do 
your countrymen thus recompense their benefactors ? . . . Save yourselves — 
leave me; and go, declare the horrid story to the shuddering nations, that Genoa 
slew its father ! " — 

or whether, after vanquishing his adversaries, he begs of 
the Genoese a place to die : 



ANDREW DORIA. 61 

" Go, make it known through Genoa that Andrew Doria is still alive. Say that 
Andrew entreats the citizens, his children, not to drive him, in his old age, to dwell 
with foreigners, who ne'er would pardon the exalted state to which he raised his 
country. Say this — and farther say, that Andrew begs but so much ground 
within his fatherland as may contain his bones." 

His words worked powerfully at last. Not only 
does half Genoa run — at least, after Fiesco's death — to 
Andrew, but even Verrina feels himself compelled, after 
seems; the mistake which he had made in the character 
of his countrymen and Fiesco, to turn to him as to the 
firmest pillar of Genoa's freedom. 



JULIA IMPERIALI. 

{The Conspiracy of Fiesco.) 

If Schiller lias succeeded in giving to Countess 
Lavagna all the melting tenderness and charm of a 
finely-toned nature, his treatment of the Countess Im- 
periali is all the more unfortunate. Not simply that he 
represents her coarse and flippant in a degree which is 
not common, even in ladies several stages lower in the 
scale of society, but he endows her besides with a not 
inconsiderable love of applause, blended with stupidity, 
and crowns her character with an excess of haughtiness 
and mystery. 

That the sister of Gianettino Doria — that pattern of a 
profligate spendthrift — should not be exactly a model of 
amiability, is not improbable ; but' her coarseness smacks 
rather of studies pursued at Stuttgart than in Genoa. 
Her language, compared with the wonderful refinement 
of Fiesco, is like that of a braggart student roaring 
through all the streets, compared with the finish" of a 
diplomat of the old school. Is it any less than this when 



64 JULIA IMPERIAL!". 

she says to Fiesco, in whose very house she is received 
as a guest : 

" Jealousy, jealousy ! Poor tiling! what would she wish for [admiring herself 
■in the fflass] ? Could she desire a higher compliment than were I to declare her 
taste mine own \ha,ughtily\ ? Doria and Fiesco ! Would not the Countess of 
Lavagna have reason to feel honored, if Doria's niece deigned to envy her choice?" 

Where such haughtiness is exhibited by the representa- 
tive of sovereignty, it ought not to be taken ill that 
thoughts of revolt are current. 

And yet this high-spirited heart is sensitive to love, 
and has genuine sensibility. But if love and good 
fortune make noble natures still grander, they intoxicate 
lower ones ; they make evil qualities still worse. And 
so our fair Julia, when believing herself secure in 
Fiesco's love, is tortured with a real lust of vainglory, 
and, longing for vengeance, she hurries from her home 
to enjoy without delay her triumph over her opponent. 
It is a remarkable phenomenon, that members of the 
fair sex, however great their esprit du coiys, yet have 
almost, without exception, very little good-will one to 
another, and pass their judgments with a correctness 
that is amazing, in view of the little inclination felt 
toward each other. And thus the coarse Julia soon 
discovers, of herself, that a less sensitive, a more coquet- 
tish and Avitty nature would better suit the perfidious 
Fiesco, and in this she is probably right ; but Leonora 
finds much sooner that these qualities are by no means 
marked in Julia. As the ladies speak their minds to 



JULIA IMPEEIALI. 65 

each other without much circumlocution, it is but 
natural that they part without any excess of mutual 
tenderness, and become mortal enemies. But, with the 
hot blood of an Italian woman, such an enmity not 
unfrequently leads to the attempt to make away with a 
rival ; and, three hundred years ago, when poison was 
much more common than now, such a step was easily 
taken. Fiesco's horror, when he learns this proof of 
Julia's love to him — for it is nothing else — seems to us, 
therefore, a little German. Perhaps, however, it is a 
studied gallantry, by which Fiesco moves the fair 
countess to come to him ; the wanton casuistry con- 
veyed in the lines — 

" The senses should always be blind messengers, and not know the secret 
compact between nature and fancy" — 

would scarcely have touched a lady of high or low 
degree, least of aU would it have brought her to the 
house of the speaker. 

In like manner, it is a little improbable that the hot- 
blooded, sensuous Julia shoidd deliver such long speeches 
about her position as : 

" Thy countenance is as glowing as thy words. Ah ! and my own, too, burns 
with guilty fire. Hence, I entreat thee, bence; let us seek the light — the tempting- 
darkness might lead astray the excited senses, and, in the absence of the modest 
day, might stir them to rebellion. Haste, I conjure thee, leave this solitude ! 

" If I betray the safeguards of my honor, that thou mayst cover me with shame 
at will, wbat bave I less to lose than all ? Wouldst thou know more, scoffer ? 
Shall I confess that the whole secret wisdom of our sex is but a sorry precaution 



66 JULIA IMPEEIALI. 

for the defence of this weak fortress, which, in the end, is the sole object of assault 
by all your vows and protestations ; and which (I blush to own it) is so willingly 
surrendered — so often betrayed to the enemy upon the first wavering of virtue ! " 

By having such thoughts at that time, she shows 
much more intellect, and much less tact, than an Italian 
lady would ordinarily exhibit ; and speaks in the tone of 
a German professor. There is more truth and nature in 
her words when she says : 

11 Hear, Fiesco, one word more. When we know our virtue to be in safety, we 
are heroines ; in its defence, no more than children [fixing her eyes on him wildly] ; 
furies, when we avenge it. Hear me ! Shouklst thou strike me to the heart with 
coldness ? " 

In the highest degree unknightly is the vengeance 
which she resolves upon. It is of a repugnant coarse- 
ness ; no man of honor, least of all an Italian cavalier, 
who, with all his villany, cannot be denied to have some 
refinement in this respect, would do thus to a woman 
who, however great her fault may have been, had sinned 
out of sheer love to him. If her brother is more than 
ungallant, and declares his desire " for a piece of 
woman's flesh done up in a great, great patent of 
nobility," it may be not incorrect. Brothers have a 
right over all the world to be ungallant, and it must be 
confessed that it is fully justified, because, at best, they 
are mere make-shifts, stop-gaps ; but the lover, even 
when simulating passion, is never justified in such rude 
treatment of her who, *at last, and amid all changes of 
circumstance, is to be the victim of his own knavish 



JULIA IMPERIAL I. 67 

malice. This touch of crudeness and coarseness only 
shows the bewilderment in which Schiller's ideas then 
were, and that lack of delicacy in the forms of social 
converse, which the Suabians had then ; and have 
now, in a measure ; a little of which may have clung 
to our young poet, at a time when his relations 
with women had not extended far beyond the famous 
baker's wife. 



^MMlm0m 










FERDINAND. 

(Love and Intrigue.) 

Not only the time in which an artist lives, and 
receives impressions, but also his personal relations and 
humors when he wrote, must be studied, if we would 
know the quality of his work. 

We have already hinted at this in connection with 
Louisa. Without recalling the thorough corruption of 
morals and the absolutism prevailing in little courts 
during the last century, the reader does not comprehend 
the motive of " Love and Intrigue," nor understand how 
this play could have called out such a mighty echo in 
Germany. The insecure and troubled condition of the 
poet himself, at that time, is to be taken into account, 
if we want to understand the piece. Springing into 
being while Schiller was oppressed by ducal persecution, 
which lay like a heavy burden upon his great soul, and 
completed after a flight from the clutch of a tyranny 
which knew no bounds, except the geographical ones 
which hemmed it iu, " Love and Intrigue " must neces- 
sarily bear witness to Schiller's revolt from the political 



10 FERDINAND. 

condition of his country, a revolt only too well justified 
in the end, strange as it may seem to us to-day. 

Repulsive to us as is the chaotic character of this 
play, we are all the more amazed at the power of the 
poet, that really superhuman glow and force with which 
he bears us on, and compels us to be partakers even of 
his own errors. Our feelings are overborne by him, even 
when our understanding and taste perfectly perceive the 
crudeness of his picture, and the want of all fine and 
compensatory shades. This rawness lies much more in 
the execution, quite beyond the reach of this young, 
little experienced, fiery artist, than in the comprehension 
of the entire plan, which is as severely truthful as the 
sketches of the characters are lifelike. It is only the 
want of nice detail that makes the dramatis persona? so 
monstrous ; and, therefore, the secondary characters, 
who need detail less — the violinist, with his lively 
musician's nature, and the stupid, prattling mother — are 
masterly drawn, because here a sketch is all that is 
wanted. 

The peculiar loftiness of soul which Schiller displays 
everywhere, reconciles us to the above deficiencies, and 
all the more that they are genuinely national ; we see in 
them the Suabian traits of the poet clearer than any- 
where else in his works. Penurious of words as the 
Suabian is, when excited and compelled to muster up 
his forces, he has a certain nervous eloquence. The 
fanatical, enthusiastic, reckless passionateness in the 



FERDINAND. 71 

Suabiau character, as well as its stiff obstinacy, Schiller 
has painted with extreme skill in his Ferdinand ; and 
revolting as is the student-like boasting of this young 
man, we must, at least, confess that it is all the more 
genuinely characteristic that there is nothing insincere in 
it, but that it exhibits the unbounded glow and unre- 
straint of a youth of profound sensibility, and no little 
nnappr o achableness . 

The same consuming fire which he infused into his 
Ferdinand coursed through the poet's own veins, as 
we can easily see from scattered letters of his, which 
have come down from his youth, where an excess of hot 
passion breaks out at every occasion. If Goethe, in his 
Tasso, Werter, Clavigo, and Weisslingen, has portrayed 
some sides of his own character, Schiller has certainly 
not done less in his Ferdinand. In this nature, open 
to the gentlest and tenderest touches of feeling, and the 
next instant blazing up like powder, in this unconsciously 
glowing soul, in this purity of heart, in the exquisite 
sensibility of the character, in the unwillingness to give 
way to conviction, or to be silenced by the voice of the 
world — who does not recognize in this the medical 
student of the Stuttgart school ? 

The sharp and battle-loving quality of Ferdinand's 
nature is not less note -worthy. If those characters 
from Goethe, which we have mentioned above, display 
something feminine, in Schiller we feel stimulated and 
refreshed by the thoroughly manly nerve which, in 



1-2 FERDINAND. 

Ferdinand, carries us back to the student's wild 
energy. 

Nowhere has the poet displayed this native manli- 
ness and natural strength in such sharp antagonism to a 
poor, nerveless, weakly soul, as in Chief-Marshal Kalb. 
The contrast is presented where the major confronts the 
marshal with these words : 

"Ferdinand. Marshal, this letter must have dropped out of your pocket on 
parade, and I have been the fortunate finder. . . . Read it, read it. If I am not 
good enough for a lover, perhaps I may do for a pimp. 

" Marshal. Confusion ! 

" Ferdinand. Wait a little, my dear marshal ; the intelligence contained in that 
letter appears to be agreeable — the finder must have his reward." 

Common as it is to jest over Kalb as if a caricature, 
he could scarcely have been drawn with a more masterly 
hand than the poet has displayed in the few scenes in 
which he mingles ; and it was scarcely possible to por- 
tray more faithfully the utter pitifulness and worthless- 
ness of that class of men who used so readily to gather 
around princes of moderate capacity and despotic nature. 
Any one acquainted with such circles, will readily recall 
instances of this kind of character. Upon an insig- 
nificant man of this sort the demands of court society, 
the habit of clothing what is common with grace, and of 
giving it expression as if having weight, the handling of 
what is really important with neglect and with a reckless 
levity, must exert the most baleful influence ; the pro- 
duct we see in the marshal, the moth who flits thoiight- 



FERDINAND. 73 

lessly in the sun of courtly favor, whereas, in Fer- 
dinand, a character is portrayed which passion first 
awakes to perfect love. His father himself wonders at 
him, and breaks out : 

"Where in the world couldst thou collect such notions, boy?" 

In their disregard of consequences, father and son are 
alike, with this difference, that, as so often occurs, out 
of horror at the intriguing character of the former, the 
son preserves the highest purity and honor, and secures 
thereby an interest at once, which, in noble natures, 
often deepens into enthusiastic sympathy. 

Even the greatest natures cannot wholly tear them- 
selves away from the prevailing tendencies of their 
times ; and if Schiller fell into the manner only too 
common in that period of " storm and stress," and 
painted people the darker the higher they stood in the 
social scale, there is this to be pleaded in his behalf, that 
Wurtemberg was not lacking in originals for a style a la 
Hollenbreughel. It is peculiar, however, that the recog- 
nition of a rascal, par necessite, in every minister, seldom 
led Schiller to attack the person of the reigning prince. 
He contented himself with merely giving a few side- 
thrusts, while a modern, of equally fiery spirit, would 
surely have struck directly at the serenissimos. 



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LOUISA MILLER. 

(Love and Intrigue.) 

" Love and Intrigue/' this youthful effort of Schiller, 
is not perfectly intelligible if the reader does not make 
real to himself the soil on which it grew, Wurtemberg, 
under the rule of Duke Charles, where SchiUer received 
the first harsh impressions which he sought afterward to 
embody artistically in this play. He paints the demoral- 
izing sway of mistresses to which this despotic, but richly 
endowed, and subsequently highly meritorious, prince 
was subject in his youth. He felt himself compelled to 
pass his judgment with that unsparing severity which 
must have been experienced by a pure, enthusiastic 
spirit, in view of a state of morality that met him every- 
where ; he even speaks with a degree of coarseness 
which can only be explained on the score of the untram- 
melled loyalty to Nature which SchiUer felt, and, in a 
degree, of his Shakespearian recollections. 

Strikingly indicative of that epoch, is the immense 
chasm which separates the rank of Ferdinand from that 
of the musician's daughter, a consciousness of which is 



76 LOUISA MILLER. 

so incessantly appearing in the dramatis personce as to 
make it seem almost exaggerated, whereas it is unques- 
tionably a perfect transcript of the time. 

According to the expression of Lady Milford, whose 
sight has manifestly been sharpened by jealousy, Louisa 
is " very interesting, and yet no beauty ; " the artist has 
caught her at the moment when Ferdinand says to her : 

" The drink is bad, like thy soul." 

If Louisa's language seems too choice and sententious 
for a girl of sixteen, we must keep the fact in view that 
Ferdinand has sought to cultivate her intellect, has lent 
her books that unquestionably represented the tran- 
scendental literature of that age, and that, as an all-per- 
vading and overmastering passion makes a poet out of 
every man, and gives emphasis to his language, it does 
so much more signally with an enthusiastic maiden. 

Brought up in the peaceful stillness of her home- 
circle, her passion for a man higher in rank than her- 
self suddenly takes exclusive possession of a soul hitherto 
given to love of God and her parents ; she forgets that 
there are other men besides — she almost forgets that 
there is a God besides him who fills her whole soul ; she 
has no longer eyes for the world, and yet she has never 
found it so fair ; she no longer knows aught of God, and 
yet never before loved Him so dearly. If this excess of 
feeling comes to a painful issue, it is, notwithstanding, 
more genuinely tragic that it is not hatred, but love, 



LOUISA MILLER. 77 

which brings her to her destruction ; and all the more 
tragic the stronger she grows, when her father, Wurm, 
and Ferdinand himself, ascribe all their misfortunes to 
her. The rude language employed by the latter against 
his betrothed, when he believes her guilty, could not 
possibly have come from Schiller, had it not been for 
that Suabian training which clung to him so persistently. 
With all their cleverness in other things, the Suabians 
are to-day certainly the least chivalrous of Germans, 
and the social position of their women the lowest ; 
although not only the beauty, but the spirit and the 
natural advantages of the Suabian women, in no wise 
deserve this setting aside. This Louisa shows, too, to 
whose keenness, grounded in her woman's nature, and 
sharpened by love, we have to ascribe the victory which 
she clearly gains over the cultivated Lady Milford, 
notwithstanding all her superiority of position, and her 
refined dialectics. In this struggle, Louisa's power lies 
in the greatness, strength, and depth of her feeling, and 
the vigorous language in which she gives it expression. 
The voice of the heart, in a moment of intense passion, is 
as superior to the eloquence of the understanding as the 
natural simplicity of popular poesy is to artistic and 
elaborate verse. 

But we are hot able to ascribe all of this philosophic 
tone of mind, all this studied casuistry, to the girl of 
sixteen ; it is the subjectivity of the poet himself which 
here and there breaks out, and overmasters the language 



78 LOUISA MILLER. 

employed by the characters themselves ; it is the student 
of the Stuttgart School, who at times reasons in so lofty 
and deep a strain. 

On this very account, because he portrays a part of 
his personality, he succeeds admirably in representing 
the unbridled foaming passion of Ferdinand, while, 
though pathetic and wrought up to the highest pitch as 
he was, he yet scarcely had any ear for the naive beauty 
of speech in a girl of humble birth, as Goethe has 
painted it so wonderfully in Gretchen. 

Difficult as it is to believe that Louisa spoke in words 
such as Schiller has put into her mouth, the great 
power of the poet is abundantly testified in her actions. 
He has portrayed with wonderful accuracy the gentle, 
womanly nature, more given to forbearance and self- 
denial than to struggle ; and everywhere subjecting itself 
to duty, law, and resignation, even when her heart is 
breaking, since she feels that these qualities are yet the 
protection of her sex from the passion and rude egoism 
of men. 

That Louisa does not fulfil her oath, a compulsory 
one as it was, would perhaps not be deemed correct in a 
maiden of our time, when, even in the lowest classes, the 
thought of revolt against divine and human laws is not 
uncommon, and when it would obviously recur to the 
mind of a grief-stricken girl ; but, at that time, the 
world was not as far advanced in ideas, and the thought 
of suicide was the more obvious one. In like manner, a 



LOUISA MILLER. 79 

comparison of the present time with that portrayed in 
this play, brings ns to the conclusion that the relation of 
the family, as weU as that to God and the state, was 
much closer than at present ; and that a father was 
invested with a much greater degree of power than he 
possesses now. 

The strength of the poetry becomes irresistible in the 
last scenes, when Louisa experiences a presentiment of 
death, as she sees Ferdinand, and" passes her correct 
judgment upon him : 

" Rather than confess his own rashness, he accuses the wisdom of Heaven." 

The utter devotion of woman's love, which rises 
above every thought of self, appears when she learns 
from his own lips the crime that he has committed 
against her, and her first thought is : 

" O God, forgive him ! God of mercy, lay not this crime on him ! " 

Would this have been the first thought of a man, whom, 
on suspicions equally lightly founded with this, his 
betrothed had brought to the very gates of death ? 



WIH^H 




LADY MILFORD. 

(Love and Intrigue.) 

If the characters of " Love and Intrigue/' owing to 
their exaggeration, impose upon the artist a difficult 
task, this is preeminently true of Lady Milford, to whom 
it is extremely difficult to ascribe any one satisfactory, 
leading impulse, and who, at the first glance, seems a 
being monstrous and impossible. The draughtsman has 
sought to overcome this difficulty, and given us the 
picture of a charming woman, whom we can, at all 
events, credit with a passionate turn of thought, and 
who may be easily conceived as saying : 

" Woman lias but to choose between ruling and serving, but the utmost joy 
of power is a worthless possession, if the mightier joy of being slave to the man 
we love be denied us." 

A finely-organized, gifted, high-strung woman, used to 

the world, equally open to good and bad influences, she 

is presented in the engraving in the act of pushing away 

the duke's present, terrified at the dreadful picture which 

the bearer displayed to her. If we credit the apology 

with which, in the exercise of wonderful tact, she 
11 



82 LADY MILFOED. 

addresses the inexperienced major, whose feelings are 
quickly touched, and who leaps readily from the deepest 
suspicion to admiration and respect — if we accept that 
apology, her misfortune and beauty have brought her into 
a position of need from which his help alone can save her. 
At bottom, she is a mere actress — affected, sentimental, 
she deceives herself in dreaming that she can wash away 
by a petty philanthropy the great blot of her existence, 
and lightly steps over the dark spot in her history, which 
could only be excused on the ground of her real love 
and faithfulness for the duke. That her sense of honor 
demands this, she has, in the true manner of mistresses, 
no suspicion when she says to Ferdinand : 

" My passions, Walter, overcome my tenderness for yon." 

Proud, ambitious, and, at least, open to a great degree 
of passionate emotion, she is, nevertheless, too much a 
courtezan to cherish any true feeling long. In her char- 
acter an English element may be seen most distinctly, in 
the haughtiness which she displays under aU circum- 
stances. It is betrayed, too, in that bitter spleen in 
which, after her project in reference to Ferdinand had 
failed, and she stood in her shame before Loxiisa, she 
treads her whole destiny under foot, and leaves the stage 
over which she had walked with victorious step ; and in 
the stubborn humor, in which she imagines that she can 
love a man with whom, till then, she had never spoken. 
This arbitrary fantasy, which impels her to throw her- 



LADY MILFOED. 83 

self into the arms of one unknown to her — which permits 
her to indulge the hope that a man of honor will forget 
her previous career — would conceal from us the slender 
consistency of her caprice, if such women did not often, 
in their very caprice, betray an iron stubbornness. If 
the reader will take the trouble to look at the character 
somewhat closely from this point of view, to untwist the 
tortuous dialectics which the poet puts in her mouth, 
and in which he communicates much more what he 
thinks about the character than what the character 
itself thinks, he will, in spite of the meagreness of the 
elaboration, be amazed at the masterly qualities brought 
to view, which, with all the confusion of ideas that 
marks Schiller's works in this first period, fill us at 
once with astonishment and dismay. If one would know 
Lady Milford as Schiller pictured her to himself, and not 
as she is really represented, he must view her in the 
scene with Louisa, where the proud, egotistical, fas- 
cinating nature, with more than a touch of the serpent 
in it, and having remarkable alertness in turning, comes 
to view ; and where she pronounces her own verdict, 
when she says to Louisa : 

" No evasion, miss. Were it not that you depend upon personal attractions, 
what in the world could induce you to reject a situation — the only one where you 
can acquire polish of manners, and divest yourself of your plebeian prejudices?" 

And when, later, she flares up with these words : 

" I cannot be blessed with him, neither shalt thou. Know, wretched girl, that 
to blast the happiness of others is itself a happiness." 



84 LADY MILFORD. 

Or when, in genuine English fashion, she wants to buy 
of Louisa the man of her heart : 

" Where am I ? What have I done ? What sentiments have I betrayed ? To 
whom have I betrayed them ? Oh, Louisa, noble, great, divine soul ! forget the 
ravings of a maniac. Name thy wishes. Ask what thou wilt ; I will serve thee 
witli all my power. I will bo thy friend — thy sister. Thou art poor, look [talcing 
off her brilliants], I will sell these jewels, sell my wardrobe, my horses and carriages; 
all shall be thine. Grant me but Ferdinand." 

This not succeeding, she comforts herself at last with 
the thought of the eclat which her decision to leave 
the court would produce, and says : 

" How the illustrious puppet will stare ! The idea is singular enough, I own 
— the presuming to astonish his serene numskull. Into what confusion will his 
court be thrown ! The whole country will be in a ferment." 

While she speaks in these dozen voices within a 
quarter of an hour, and shows these many sides of her 
character, all of which have nothing abiding, she 
justifies us in the expectation that, in order to astonish 
the court, and the " illustrious puppet" still more, if she 
goes away to-day she will return to-morrow. 




A.v'.Ramberg Jsl 



PHILIP II. 

{Don Carlos.) 

German poetry has no work in which the nature of 
absolute power, its inevitable effect upon the immediate 
surroundings of the ruler, as well as upon every thing 
that he touches, is portrayed with any approach to the 
skill displayed in " Don Carlos." The chief character- 
istic of despotism is the repression of all true pro- 
ductivity, because to produce requires a progress which 
absolutism denies, and must deny — production being 
the developiug of an organic creation according to its 
own inner laws, and therefore opposed to all external 
compidsion. Despotism, in whatever form it appears, 
whether as monarchical, democratic, or ecclesiastical 
absolutism, has always been the sworn foe of all pro- 
ductivity — has always exhibited a desire to depreciate 
every thing which has vitahty, and to convert its life 
into a mere mechanism. 

It is this element which Schiller has introduced 
to us as characterizing the court and national life of 
Madrid ; and by it he easily succeeds in filling us with 



86 PHILIP II. 

that terror and hatred of tyranny, the excitement of 
which must certainly have been one purpose of the play. 
In becoming conscious of an influence so hostile to 
culture, we are naturally inclined to hate the causer of 
it, and all the more when his overmastering disregard of 
justice becomes apparent to us. The father has robbed 
the son of the lady whom he loved ; the most sacred 
claim of him who stands in the state second only to the 
tyrant, has no weight ; law exists for one man alone ; for 
all others there is no such word. Side by side with the 
oppressed son, we see the instruments of tyranny. Since 
the pleasure of free action is denied to them, they know 
only one interest — their own ; priests, generals, dig- 
nitaries of every kind, even women, know only this 
goal ; and the most reckless egoism lurks everywhere 
beneath the cold, polished, soulless form of courtly 
manners and courtly speech ; that no one expresses 
himself otherwise, or apparently thinks and feels other- 
wise than is officially prescribed, shows us most distinctly 
the weight of the burden that rests upon all. It is not 
enough that the gentle Mondecar rejoices when promised 
an auto-da-fe — " 'Tis only heretics they burn ; " even the 
frivolous Eboli shrinks from the thought that she could 
be considered a poorer Christian than the Marchioness 
Mondecar. These two features show us admirably 
where we are. The complete perversion of natural 
feeling is the best preparation for the appearance of 
him who is to be the representative of absolutism. His 



PHILIP II. 87 

first expression touches upon the sustaining of external 
rank, whose external rigidness is well known to go hand 
in hand with its internal corruption. The dispropor- 
tionate severity with which Philip punishes a light 
deviation from etiquette, the scorn with which he 
accompanies the punishment, show us at once the cold- 
ness, stiffness, excessive jealousy, and, at length, the 
cruelty of his character. StiU Philip is none the less 
every inch a king ; one feels him to be a man born to 
command, even what is common he does with a certain 
dignity; majesty, and the habit of bearing rule, do not 
desert him for an instant ; but he shows himself as well 
the pedantic supporter of a system which, at last, 
presses with its leaden weight as heavily upon him as 
upon others. With all his jealousy and selfishness, he 
yet remains, in bearing, a gentleman ; and, in him, 
Schiller portrays with inimitable skill the difference 
between mere external politeness and inward nobleness ; 
the latter quality Philip never reaches, although he never 
becomes trivial and commonplace. 

Philip's unfruitful greatness is thoroughly unequal 
to any positive forth-putting of good ; he can merely 
destroy by his despotic instinct, which disregards all 
personal rights, even those of his son, whom he thus 
reproaches : 

" I scarce can love 
Those sons who choose more wisely than their fathers." 

Philip's absolutism, however, is not an inheritance 



88 PHILIP II. 

which he is merely to receive and preserve ; it lies, on 
the contrary, merely in his dark and cruel nature, for 
whose satisfaction he has wrought out this system of 
blood. He is a tiger throughout ; and his only mag- 
nanimity is that of the lion. All forbearance appears to 
him to be weakness, and he is inexhaustible in schemes 
involving barbaric rigidness. The evil conscience, which 
no sophistry wiU silence, the feeling of horror at the 
intermingling of sensuality and cruelty in his own nature, 
is the source of a suspicion which spares no one ; and 
tortures those the most who stand the nearest to the 
king. Even to Don Carlos he says : 

'• Trust my best army to thy thirst for rule, 
And put a dagger in my murderer's hand ! " 

The MachiaveUism so necessary to the despot is just as 
clearly shown in his words to Alva — 

" I'm pleased that Carlos hates my counsellors, 
But I'm disturbed that he despises them ! " — 

as the hatred that breaks out against freedom every- 
where, wherever it may appear. In this respect, one of 
the finest touches of the play is that he cannot bear the 
Marquis Posa free. Even after the king has begun to 
love him : 

" This pride I will not bear. From this day forth 
I hold you in my service. No remonstrance — 
For I will have it so." 

It is the punishment of all despots that, sooner or 
later, they necessarily come to see that love blooms only 



PHILIP II. 89 

in the sunlight of freedom ; and that they who do not 
allow liberty to be known in their domain never partake, 
or deserve to partake, of human love ; the feeling of 
isolation must necessarily turn their own unreciprocated 
affection into boundless hate, and make them malicious 
and cruel to the very objects of their previous kindly 
feeling. This is the tragic fate to which we see Philip 
at last succumb, whose betrayed love to Posa, who gives 
him up as soon as he sees his nature, is transformed into 
fearful vengeance against humanity, whose interests Posa 
preferred to the affection 6f the king. 

The artist has portrayed, in his picture of the 
proud monarch, Philip's barren, bigoted, and knavish 
nature, joining it, nevertheless, with an unquestioned 
air of high breeding. As his foundation, he has taken 
Titian's celebrated and almost unsurpassed portrait, 
whose matchless power is at once a testimony of the 
character of the king, a judgment which, to all 
eternity, shall be irrefutable and irrecoverable. 



-■....-- ■■■■■• 




: 






ELISABETH OF VALOIS. 

{Don Carlos.) 

Compulsion unnerves and disheartens weak natures, 
while noble and strong souls are roused by it to resist- 
ance ; they love all the more purely and glowingly the 
freedom that is denied them. 

This is taught us preeminently by the majestic char- 
acter of Elisabeth, to whom the poet has imparted a 
profusion of admirable traits, and a reahty which, in the 
earlier plays, we have only seen in the remarkably life- 
like character of the musician's wife in " Love and 
Intrigue.'' Here he has given us a figure full of dig- 
nity, greatness of soul, and truthfulness to nature ; has 
displayed the maturity of his own power, the larger 
experience of life, and the closer knowledge of the human 
heart, which he had at this time gained through his 
intimacy with Charlotte von Kalb — the object of his love 
at that time. 

The opening scene in Aranjuez displays to us, with 
unsurpassed skiU, the painful situation of the royal lady, 
as well as the security with which she bears herself, and 



92 ELISABETH OF VALOIS. 

which forms so prominent a feature of her character. 
The high-born daughter of sunny France, trained under 
the humane ideas of the enlightened patron of arts, 
science, and all generous culture, Francis I., she can 
never reconcile herself to the leaden atmosphere of the 
gloomy, bigoted, and pedantic gravity of the court at 
Madrid, and longs to fly from the iron yoke of etiquette 
to the free air of her childhood's home. While selfish 
natures wish to gain freedom merely for themselves, 
loftier souls desire to gain it, and keep it, for others. 
That Elisabeth belongs to these, we see at once from the 
manner in which she speaks of the marriage which was 
to be forced upon the Eboli : 

" The man whom I reward 
With my sweet Eboli must be a man 
Of noble stamp indeed. . . . 

But we fain would know 
If be can love, and win return of love. . . . 
'Tis a bard fortune to be sacrificed." 

Her mode of thinking is more clearly manifested 
still, where she receives Marquis Posa, and wishes him 
happiness in the life he means to lead : 

" A greater prince in your retired domain 
Than is King Philip on his throne — a freer" — 

or when she says to him subsequently — 

" How will my heart rejoice should this become 
A refuge for the liberties of Europe ! " 

The royalness, the tone of command in her nature, 



ELISABETH OF VALOIS. 93 

dignifies every word that she says — betrays itself not 
only in the niassiveness and dignity which everywhere 
are hers, in the appreciation which she shows for all 
great interests, but preeminently in the readiness with 
which she subordinates her own personal wishes, and 
even the most secret longings of her heart. It is with 
some verisimilitude that Posa can say of her to the 
jealous Philip : 

" She sees with some resentment her high hopes 
All disappointed, and herself shut out 
From share of empire. Your son's youthful ardor 
Offers itself to her far-rea'ching views — 
Her heart ! I doubt if she can love." 

Her feeling toward the infante is rather sympathy 
than love ; she takes an interest in him because she sees 
him suffer, not because he inspires her with admiration 
or reverence. These qualities she has in marked degree 
for Posa. With him alone she feels that she is perfectly 
understood and appreciated ; she looks up to him — down 
to Carlos ; and when she says to the marquis about her 
relation to the prince — 

" Tour friend, 
Marquis ! so wholly occupied your mind, 
That for his cause you quite forgot my own " — 

the confession would relate much more closely to Posa 
than to Carlos, as appears still more plainly from his 
answer : 

" Yes, in all other women — but in one, 
One only, 'tis not so ; for you I swear it. . . . 



94 ELISABETH OF VALOIS. 

Then promise, queen, 
That you will ever love him. . . . 
That you will love him still unchanged forever, 
Say — do you promise ? 

" Queen. That my heart alone 

Shall ever vindicate my love I promise " — 

and continues — 

" You are then going, marquis, and have not 
Told me how soon, and when, we meet again ? 

" Marquis [his face turned away]. 
Yes, we shall surely meet again. 

" Queen. Now, Posa, 

I understand you. Why have you done this ? 

"Marquis. Carlos, or I myself! 

" Queen. No, no ; you rush 

Headlong into a deep you deem sublime, 
Do not deceive yourself. I know you well ; 
Long have you thirsted for it. . . . 

'Tis the love 
Of admiration which has won your heart. — 
Is there no hope of preservation ? 

"Marquis. None. . . . 

" Queen [turning away, and covering her face']. 
Go ! never more shall I respect a man. 

" Marquis [casts himself on his knees before her 
in evident emotion]. 
queen ! O Heaven ! How lovely still is life ! " 

By the side of this scarcely - veiled passionate 
attachment, how cool is her tone to Carlos in the 
last scene ! — 

" We must not now unnerve each other thus. 

. . . With his clear life 
He purchased thine, and shall this precious blood 



ELISABETH OF VALOIS. 95 

Flow for a mere delusion of the brain ? 
O Carlos, I have pledged myself for thee ! 
On that assurance did he flee from hence 
More satisfied." 

Even the confession of attachment which she makes 
to him, appears to be rather a means of quieting him 
than the fulfilling of the request which the deceased 
Posa left ; and does not, as in the case of the latter, rise 
to a devotion so entire that it would retain its object at 
any cost, for she sends Carlos away; the clearest proof 
that she has a larger, more richly-endowed nature, more 
genuine capacity to rule, than he. 



DON CARLOS. 

[Don Carlos.) 

Caelos's nature must necessarily be formed upon 
Philip's system of education ; for among the most 
destructive influences of despotism, in whatever form it 
appear, is this — that its iron pressure annihilates every 
independent growth, and that the character, prematurely 
compelled to assume a prescribed form, is able to attain 
to no free development. And so we find it in Schiller's 
Carlos — who, in many not unimportant respects, may 
differ from the historic original — an amiable, high- 
spirited, fine-toned, captivating, stubborn, and capricious 
noble, but weak man, equally unskilled in doing, and 
in commanding men; now reserved and distrustful, the 
next moment improvident and stormy ; but, above every 
thing, impracticable, unproductive, and apathetic ; for, 
since no free scope is granted to him, he soon loses all 
relish for activity. 

The first need of man — the most powerful medica- 
ment for all ills of mind and of body — is labor. The 

13 



98 DON CARLOS. 

struggle with a great, self-imposed task brings one to a 
consciousness of his power. This specific is, however, 
denied to the future heir of two worlds after his return 
from the university • and, with its lack, begins the per- 
plexity of his spirit. Because no healthful tasks are 
prescribed to him, his whole power is directed in 
the form of a sickly passion to the most unnatural 
ends, and his will becomes caprice ; for by no other 
word can we call Carlos's love for his mother, 
whom he had never yet more than half- known. 
Elisabeth herself says, with entire correctness, of this 
passion : 

" It is but spleen and waywardness and pride 
Attract you thus so madly to your mother." 

At bottom, it springs merely from unconscious 
hostility to the tyrant who troubles his whole existence, 
and whose claims, as a father, are to him a mere 
abstraction, and have no power over his soul. Let us 
take his own words : 

" Am I to blame if slavish nurture crushed 
Love's tender germ within my youthful heart ? 
Six years I'd numbered ere the fearful man, 
They told me was my father, met mine eyes 
One morning — 'twas when, with a stroke, I saw him 
Sign four death-warrants. After that I ne'er 
Beheld him, save when, for some childish fault, 
I was brought out for chastisement." 

Where shall the love come from which, like every 



DON CARLOS. 99 

other good things niust be struggled for, won, deserved ? 
Next to active labor, the need of love is the most 
powerful factor in the human heart. We love in others 
not that which we have, but what we lack. The poor 
Carlos is deficient in strength of mind and freedom, 
both of which he presupposes in the queen, and finds in 
Posa ; it is these that so strongly bind his weaker nature 
to theirs. He, himself, confesses this cause of his affec- 
tion, when he reminds his newly-found friend of the time 
of youth when — 

" I had no sorrow but to see myself 

Eclipsed by thy bright genius ; so I vowed, 

Since I might never cope with thee in power, 

That I would love thee with excess of love." 

Noble as this sensibility is, it yet indicates, if we 
must honestly confess it, a weakly nature. Manly 
spirits are naturally attracted to what, is general, 
to ideas and things ; womanly ones to what is 
individual to persons. Carlos loves freedom so long- 
as Posa speaks to him of it ; but when one fails 
to stand by his side, and support him, he sinks 
back into the position which he paints with the 
words : 

" I, too, have had my visions of a Carlos 
Whose cheek would fire at Freedom's glorious name ; 
But he, alas ! has long been in his grave. 
He thou seest here no longer is that Carlos 
Who took his leave of thee in Alcala ; 
Who, in the fervor of a youthful heart, 



100 DON CARLOS. 

Resolved at some no distant time to wake 
The golden age in Spain. Oh ! the conceit, 
Though but a child's, was yet divinely fair. 
Those dreams are past." 

If he regards the most noble goal which he can 
propose to himself as a mere dream, as soon as his 
best prop falls, he shows his womanly weakness no 
less plainly when, subsequently, he finds Posa again, 
and cries — 

" Thus arm in arm with thee I dare defy 
The universal world into the lists" — 

which certainly is no manly sentiment, since a real 
man, more especially if one of power, would have 
proposed this task to himself at all events, as Posa 
really does. Weak men have almost always mistrust 
and doubt, not only regarding others, but themselves 
as well ; and this we see in Carlos, in the scene 
where the artist has represented him, in which, 
after Lerma's revelations respecting Posa's deeds, the 
prince believes himself betrayed by the latter, and 
breaks out — 

"I've lost him now, and I am destitute" — 

and he passes true judgment upon Posa's character 
when he says — 

" Must not his country dearer to him prove 
Than Carlos?" 

To comprehend, and possess magnanimity, are cer- 
tainly very different things. 



D N C A E L S . 101 

The incompleteness of his nature is no less clearly 
painted in his relation to the queen and the Eboli. For 
a man, love is no goal of life ; he never gives it the first 
place — it has that only in the woman. A true man 
would not have caused the fair Eboli to sigh in vain; 
he would scarcely have loved the great ambitious 
queen, but would have contented himself with honoring 
her ; in doing as Don Carlos does, there is something- 
boyish. 

The prince reaches the culminating point of a milk- 
sop, as Heine might say, when, after refusing the fair 
demands of the Eboli, he yet wishes to make use of her 
as a third party. This is a genuine German touch, and 
indeed there is nothing Southern in the character — a 
real German coloring is seen in his whole mode of 
thought. While Philip, Alva, Domingo, Posa, display 
more or less of the national character, in Carlos the 
Flemish-German element prevails — the blond ; and, on 
this account, the artist has been compelled to represent 
him so, necessarily deviating from the authentic por- 
traits of the historic Carlos, in which there is more of 
a knavish, crafty look, than could be allowed in our 
engraving. 

Powerful shocks may drive weak men to great 
resolutions, but they cannot give the power to carry 
them into act; and if, through Roderigo's death, we 
see Carlos driven to a comprehension of his true duty, 
as is expressed in his words to Elisabeth : 



102 DON CARLOS. 

" There is a higher, a more ueedful good 
Than your possession. A brief uight 
Has winged the idle current of my years, 
And brought me to an early ripeness " — 

this immense change in his nature necessarily leads 
to his destruction, the tragic element lying just in this 
— that, to do his life-work, not the will is wanting, 
but the power. 




t^^v ta>lc?s/-AJ - -> i \ 



MARQUIS POSA. 

(Bon Carlos.) 

Low natures have no ideal goals, common ones 
follow them only in youth ; but noble ones retain them 
till manhood, only with more earnest and steady aim. 
Among the last Schiller's Posa belongs, in whom the 
artist has been able to portray, with masterly skill, that 
genuine greatness of soul whose sacred fire burned in 
his own breast. 

If, in Don Carlos, the womanly element of char- 
acter is most prominent, in Posa it is the manly one 
that most appears. Philip, Carlos, chief of all, the 
queen, everywhere feel, in spite of their exceedingly 
varied points of view, that, in him, great ideal interests 
far outweigh all personal ties. That no friend, however 
dear, is, with him, to be compared with the claims of 
humanity, is pictured in the interview with Carlos, 
where, without troubling himself much about the 
prince's grief, he speaks chiefly of his undeception in 
not finding him as he hoped : 



104 MARQUIS POSA. 

" Not thus I looked to find Don Philip's son. 
.... No more I sec 
The youth of lion-heart to whom I come 
The envoy of a brave and suffering people, 
But as the deputy of all mankind. 
I clasp thee thus — 'tis Flanders that clings here, 
Around thy neck, appealing with my tears 
To thee for succor in her bitter need." 

It is clear that this is the scene in which the artist 
should represent him ; where the heroism, energy, and 
decisiveness of his character form the most wholesome 
contrast to the noble but weakly nature of Carlos. 

Nevertheless, Posa, although a powerful thinker, a 
brilliant speaker, a bold soldier, is no statesman ; and it 
does not appear to have been the poet's intention to 
have drawn him as one. For this role he has too 
marked a preference ; for the most desperate measures, 
too much enthusiasm ; and, in all that he does, he is 
too easily led away by the impulse of the moment. He 
is the prophet of a new age — not a man of affairs. His 
very effort to win Carlos over to espouse the cause of the 
provinces, while he knew his weakness, and the fruitless- 
ness of the effort in case of success, does not speak in his 
behalf; still less the announcement of his plan during the 
interview with Philip— brilliant as it is as a masterpiece 
of eloquence. No statesman would surely undertake 
to convert a despot of sixty years — only an enthusiast 
would do this ; and Philip, therefore, rightly regards 
him as such, although he learns to love the man. 



MAE QUI S POSA. 105 

Lacking, therefore, as Posa is in balance and 
wholeness of character, he is yet a man of splendid 
endowments^ displaying remarkable depth of thought in 
every thing that he says. An instance may be fonnd in 
the manner in which he justifies himself in his soliloquy 
before meeting the king : 

" How came I here ? Is it caprice or chance 
That shows me now my image in this mirror ? 

.... Was this but chance? 
Perhaps 'twas something more. What else is chance 
But the rude stone which from the sculptor's hand 
Beceives its life ? Chance comes from Providence. 
What the king wants of me but little matters — 
I know the business I shall have with him. 
Were but one spark of truth with boldness flung 
Into the despot's soul, how fruitful 'twere 
In the kind hand of Providence!" 

Satisfied as we may be with this preliminary theo- 
rizing, we must be less so with the application which 
he makes of it — displaying the dreamer as it does. 
Despots may be scorched by the sparks of truth, but 
they are not melted by them. 

If the action of the marquis does not appear to be* 
always justified, there is no lack of power in the poet's 
effort to make clear to us the influence of his brilliant, 
earnest eloquence. There is a sustained enthusiasm, a 
subdued glow of sensibility, a loftiness of thought, 
whose magic power never escapes us, making clear 
to us that Philip, hard - pressed, and most sorely 



106 MAKQUISPOSA. 

wounded by jealousy and suspicion, must give Ms con- 
fidence to a man who holds such views, and must 
confess — 

" Poison itself 
May, in a worthy nature, be transformed 
To some benignant use. . . . 
Ne'er met I such a man" as this. . . . 
Marquis, you know mankind. Just such a man 
As you I long have wished for. You are kind, 
Cheerful, and deeply versed in human nature." 

The most delicate touch is in the picture of his 
relation to the queen, where she gives a sketch of him 
in the words : 

"The first 
That made me feel how proud a thing, it was 
To be the Queen of Spain and Spanish men " — 

and he, with genuine Spanish gallantry, replies : 

" At that time I never could have dreamed 
That France should lose to us the only thing 
We envied her possessing." 

It is Posa alone who gives her a glimpse into the 
dark, veiled future — Posa, who offers her a ray of hope 
and satisfaction ; he alone shows her that, in a manly 
character, nobleness is not associated with weakness, 
nor strength with cruelty. Her quiet and beautiful 
confidence he reciprocates with the same, and cherishes 
an enthusiasm for her which always proclaims itself in 
the most tender way, whether he says to Philip — 



MARQUIS POS A. 107 

" And there exists besides in woman's soul 
A treasure, sire, beyond all outward show, 
Above the reach of slander — female virtue " — 

or, at the end, when he has lost his rash throw, he 
expresses to her, and through her to his friend, the 
warmest wishes of his heart : 

" Here, therefore, here, 
Upon this sacred altar — on the heart 
Of his loved queen — I lay my last bequest, 
A precious legacy — he'll find it here, 
When I shall be no more. . . . 
Tell him, in manhood, he must still revere 
The dreams of early youth, nor ope the heart 
Of Heaven's all-tender flower to canker-worms 
Of boasted reason ; nor be led astray, 
When, by the wisdom of the dust, he hears 
Enthusiasm, heavenly born, blasphemed." 

Posa is a necessary victim, because, while compre- 
hending a new epoch, he has not power enough to usher 
it in. He shows the way into the Promised Land ; but, 
like most prophets, he is not able to enter in and 

possess it. 




','i/io, ; . ■■ 



PRINCESS EBOLI. 

{Don Carlos.) 

If it is the happy prerogative of the daughters of 
the South to commonly possess such vigorous natures 
that they do not need, and cannot exercise, much reflec- 
tion ; and, in every thing which pertains to their inner life, 
merely follow their instincts, they yet ordinarily use 
understanding and consideration for the purpose of 
assuring themselves of the means to gain their ends. 
Through this strength of will they gain that masterly 
aplomb, which is so irresistible to the man of the North, 
and which is so helpful to them under all circumstances. 
The women of the South, therefore, stand not only much 
closer to Nature, but they have also much more capacity 
than those of the North. Culture has little influence 
over them — it changes nothing in them, at best it lends 
them sharper weapons ; and the compensation for culture 
is generally found in their native fineness of spirit, whose 
ready nimbleness is immensely enhanced by the rank 
vigor of their natures. 



110 PRINCESS EBOLI. 

Such a character — its germ, to be sought in a 
strongly - sensuous life — the poet represents to us in 
his Eboli, in whom he has had the skill to compen- 
sate, by a peculiarly piquant grace and sparkle, what 
is lacking to her in breadth of view : 

" The princess, with those merry eyes of hers, 
Has plagued me all the morning. See, she scarce 
Can hide the joy she feels to leave the country." 

Thus Queen Elisabeth presents to us the charming 
creature who inflames the desires of the father, while 
she herself cherishes in her inflammable heart a hot 
glow for the son. That this heart of hers is not filled 
with enthusiasm for cockroaches and sunset tints; that 
she cares nothing at all about dead Nature — but only 
about men ; that what the Germans call Gemutli is 
entirely wanting to her, is so decisive a mark of the 
hot-blooded Spanish woman, that only the highest 
gifts in Schiller could have led him to portray it 
correctly, without visiting the South, and seeing its 
fair inhabitants. It is a triumphant proof of the 
strength of our poet's artistic intuition. The dark- 
eyed daughters of Rome, as well as of Madrid, are 
alike in this play ; their enjoyment of Nature consists 
in driving through the dusty Corso or Prado just 
as far as all the world drives, in order to see and 
be seen. 

So far as all the world goes is the distance traversed 



PKINCESS EBOLI. ill 

by the Eboli in all other things which are indifferent to 
her. Scarcely is a marriage proposed to her which does 
not please her, when her blood boils up, and she thrusts 
the offer away; and " convenance" with her comes at 
once to its end. 

This proposition, which is to unite her to a creature 
of the king, and so to the king himself, hurls into the 
excited senses of the princess this one resolve — now to 
lay hold herself upon him whom she really loves. Com- 
mencing the accomplishment of her plan, the hot blood 
of the South, which always makes romance begin where 
it ends in the North, portrays itself in her impatient 
words to the page : 

" How truly blest 
Might he have been already, in the time 
You've taken to describe his wishes to mo ! " 

The artist has pictured her with rare skill in this 
situation — awaiting the object of her love. It is the 
fairest inspiration — the pearl of our work ! And he 
does well to present her thus to us ; her life knows only 
two occupations — the preparing of herself for her lover, 
and the gaining possession of him. Every thing else 
touches her not — interests her not, or, at any rate, only 
so far as it has influence upon these two leading prin- 
ciples. Where she loves, she grows witty, keen, rich in 
thought, imposing, empty as she is in other things which 
do not pertain to the chief end of her life, to which, 
with reckless ardor, she sacrifices aU, but for which 



112 PRINCESS EBOLI. 

slie desires all. How charmingly, in the celebrated 
tete-a-tete, she satirizes Carlos's grief, and, with the 
most graceful of summons, she knows how to answer 
him when she says : 

" Near such high virtue every maiden fear 
Takes wing at once. . . . 

You who in those strict courts where women rule, 
Even there find partial judges. 

Thou gracious Heaven, 
That gav'st him all those blessings, why deny 
Him eyes to see the conquests he has made ? " 

Love is the only subject on which the fair princess 
has ever maturely thought ; but when she says — - 

" Love is the only treasure on the face 
Of this wide earth that knows no purchaser 
Besides itself. . . . 

I ne'er will make 
Division of my joys. To him alone 
I choose as mine, I give up all forever. 
One only sacrifice I make, but that 
Shall be eternal"— 

it is, of course, only a general theory, that readily allows 
of exceptions in daily fact ; and, most of all, it must be 
confessed, in her ! It is notorious that every lady, in 
other lands than Spain, asserts not only to her lover, but 
to herself as well, that she really and truly loves him — 
the one then favored — above all others, and that she will 
love him forever. A German lady, disappointed like the 



PRINCESS EBOLI. 113 

Eboli in her fairest hopes, would perhaps marry out of 
convenance • but give her person to a profligate, merely 
out of jealousy, in order to avenge herself for a neglect 
— hardly. The Eboli, on the contrary, reasons like a 
genuine Spaniard, who knows nothing about renuncia- 
tion; and who can say, with true pride of beauty, of 
Carlos's relation to the queen : 

" Should his love prove hopeless. 
Who can believe it ? Would a hopeless love 
Persist in such a struggle ? Called to revel 
In joys for which a monarch sighs in vain? 
A hopeless love makes no such sacrifice." 

But in recklessly sacrificing every thing to love, she 
does it out of revenge : 

" 'Twill cost me dear, but here my triumph lies — 
That it will cost her infinitely more " — 

and Posa judges perfectly correctly, when he doubts 
whether she can ever forgive being despised : 

" Love was the price, 
The understood condition of her virtue : 
You failed to pay that price — 'twill therefore fall." 

The instinct of women is keen, and they pass much 
more accurate judgment upon one another than men do. 
The Eboli feels at once, when she speaks with the queen 
of Carlos, that Elisabeth does not love him ; and, from 
this instant, her passion awakens for him afresh, and she 
experiences the most bitter regret when she sees him 

15 



114 PKINCESS EBOLI. 

threatened through her mistake. But whether the 
touch which represents her as revering the woman 
who reigns in Carlos's heart, without wishing to 
do so, is not rather the token of a German than 
of a passionate Southern nature, we must leave 
undecided. 










V^i^Z/^ 



ALVA. 

(Don Carlos.) 

Only a Philip can produce an Alva, because he alone 
can find use for one. As the master, so the servant. 
This accomplice of a despot is cold and cutting, not like 
a sword, but like an axe. As absolutism degrades the 
person into a thing, the duke, although not in his own 
view, becomes not so much the servant of the state as the 
mere tool of his master ; nothing is so signally striking 
in him as the absence of all large views. Only once, in 
the whole play, does he rise into the higher plaues of 
thought, where, exasperated and defamed by Carlos, he 
says at last, referring to his services to the kiug : 

" Fall well lie knows far easier is the task 
To make a monarch than a monarchy ; 
Far easier, too, to stock the world with kings 
Than frame an empire for a king to rule. 

. . . And how much blood, 
Your subjects' dearest blood, must flow in streams, 
Before two drops could make a king of you ! " 

This presupposition must necessarily lead to entirely 



116 ALVA. 

different conclusions, but the genuine absolutist does 
not draw them. When Carlos asks for the application, 
we hear nothing further than — 

" This sword has given our laws to distant realms, 
Has blazed before the banner of the cross, 
And in three quarters of the globe has traced 
Ensanguined furrows for the seed of faith. 
God was the judge in heaven, and I on earth " — 

which every hangman can say as well ; he has no other 
idea than that of rude power ; he supports whatever 
exists, indifferent whether it be good or bad, and there- 
fore Carlos answers him with entire correctness : 

" God or the devil, it little matters which, 
Tours was the chosen arm" — 

and shows him thereby his place as a mere tool. Alva 
is, according to the general belief, as well as his own, 
a knight and a man of honor, as he understands it, 
and as, unhappily, too many others do as well ; for 
his conception of honor does not hinder him from 
doing all possible dishonorable deeds — listening at doors, 
intriguing, becoming a pimp for his lord, intercepting 
letters, becoming a general hangman, without allowing 
such a dishonorable appellation to be applied to him ; 
that would be a calumny which he, unquestionably, 
would wash out with blood, and for which he even 
takes up his sword against the son of his lord. Here, 
too, at the bottom, he is wholly in his place as a tool ; 
whoever takes hold of the knife is cut. 



ALVA. 117 

Meanwhile, little as the duke has of higher thought 
and lofty motive, little else as he will be thau mere arm, 
or right hand rather, there is one object never to be lost 
sight of — himself. He is conservative, and in order to 
sustain himself whenever he is threatened, and his place 
in peril, he himself becomes a revolutionist. This is seen 
most clearly in his interview with Domingo, where the 
two nobles exchange views respecting the condition of 
affairs. True to his part, the priest was more cunning 
than he, but kept his peace, thinking, "Words let slip 
are confidants defamed ; " yet, when Alva leads off, he, 
too, cannot hold back with the confessions of an honest 
soul. The prince is the enemy of them both, that is 
clear; and, according to their theory, his ultimate rule 
will, of course, at once put throne and altar in peril : 

" He dares to think ; 
His brain is all on fire with wild chimeras — 
He reverences the people ! And is this 
A man to he our king ? " 

Alva replies out of a good store of historical knowledge : 

" These thoughts will vanish when he's called to rule." 

But as he none the less enters upon intrigue, he shows 
all the more how much more interested he is for his 
own sake than for that of the state. If it brings him 
advantage, the duke shows a surprising talent in viewing 
things from various sides. He is always a servant of the 
state, "and yet he says to Philip : 



US ALVA. 

" I owe my deepest knowledge to the state, 
Aud my best judgment. As to what besides 
I know, think, or suspect, belongs to me alone." 

True, he expresses this only to sell his secret at a higher 
price : 

" Not all that stands in clear light in my eye 
Is ripe enough for the king. Will be be satisfied 
I must beg, and not, as lord, demand ? " 

But in such cases, as we see at once, he goes too coarsely 
to work, and misses his goal. His common, low mode 
of thought is clearly indicated in the first words that he 
directs to Posa : 

" The king is in your hands. Employ this moment 
To your own best advantage" — 

and he places the crown upon the queen's head, when, 
with Domingo, believing himself to be hard pushed by 
Posa, he seeks again to form alliance with Elisabeth, 
whom he just before was on the point of destroying ; of 
course, to the welfare of the state, whose most loyal 
servant he calls himself. 

The face of the duke, which the artist has faithfully 
copied from existing portraits of the historical Alva, 
since they completely conform to Schiller's delineatiou, 
displays, in his fixed calmness and coldness, all that 
pitiless egoism which forms the foundation of his char- 
acter ; that view of the world is reflected in it which 
recognizes mere force, and no higher quality. There is 
an old age to be revered, because it makes its wearer 



ALVA. 119 

milder and more just, nobler and more intelligent; but 
this is the old age of great souls — common ones are 
made only colder, harder, and more egoistical thereby; 
their hatred, stubbornness, and intolerance increase with 
the burden of years ; their nobler impulses, devotion, and 
the smiles of joy, are the only things that the snows of 
age stiffen beneath its white covering ; to this latter class 
belong the rigid features of the iron duke, upon which 
the curse of centuries rests ; and whose portrait the poet 
has drawn in such wonderfully characteristic lines. 




a>u!e 



WALLENSTEIN. 

( Wallcnstein.) 

Wallenstein, tlie greatest work of our Schiller, is 
also the most perfect tragedy, on the whole, which the 
German theatre possesses. This has gradually come to 
be a recognized fact, and, if it be so, the chief reason 
lies in this, perhaps, that the hero of the mighty trilogy 
is, at the same time, the figure most skilfully conceived, 
most captivating, and executed, even in the smallest 
details, with the most masterly touch. It is here, 
perhaps, that German art has gained its only grand 
success — in showing the unmistakable nature of genius, 
and its almost miraculous energies. 

Not as if the other characters of the play, as well as 
the relation in which they stand to each other in the 
advancement of the plot, are less admirable; not as if 
they do not spring from the purest and highest poesy ; 
but they are only portrayed on single sides, while the 
Friedlander is copied in every fold of his heart. 

Even in the prologue, the poet transfers us to the 
eminence necessary to survey the field about to be 

16 



122 WALLENSTEIN. 

described — painting to us the condition of Germany at 
the beginning of the Thirty Years' War : 

" On the dark canvas of this age 
There stands portrayed a venture bold, 
And one who wears a hero's face. 
You know him well, master of hosts, 
The camp's great idol and the nation's scourge, 
The prop, and yet the terror, of his king, 
Fortune's adventurous son, 

Who, when upborne by the favor of his time, 
Honor's loftiest pinnacle quickly reached, 
And, still insatiate, soaring to loftier heights, 
Himself a victim to untamed ambition fell." 

This prepares us for the play, the main theme of which 
is the artistic filling out and reanimating of history : 

" Art shall now summon him before your eye, 
And cause your hearts to feel with him ; 
For Art, that binds and limits all extremes, 
Brings them all back to Nature's amis again. 
She sees man in life's earnest stress, 
And to unhappy starry influences 
Ascribes the greater moiety of his faults." 

In the background are portrayed not only fearful 
masses of men, but marked characters surrounding him ; 
first pictured in "The Camp," and then coming before 
us in " Piccolonrini," they only add colossal greatness to 
the figure which they introduce. Schiller has displayed 
such wonderful acumen in seizing upon and illuminating 
real history by the exercise of a kind of divination, he 
has so remarkably anticipated the researches of later 



WALLENSTEIN. 123 

scholars, that the artist has had little more to do than 
faithfully to follow the historical portraits of Wallenstein, 
as they have been given us by Vandyke and others. 

His is a rigid, genuine soldier's face, as all the 
portraits give him — externally cold, yet capable of the 
most reckless and consuming passion ; thin, with strong 
cheek-bones, with black, penetrating, cahn, and severe, 
eyes. The highest power of will and action speaks from 
the whole head, conjoined with an impenetrable reserve 
— a tendency to profound meditation, and even to mystic 
inquiries, while a love for what is miraculous and myste- 
rious is manifested in the immoderately high -arched 
forehead, and the sharply-defined sides of the head. A 
spirit of resolute constancy is shown by the steadfast 
look directed to the ground ; the firmly-closed mouth, 
the protruding under-lip, the bold profile, the strongly- 
marked lower face, having something of the character 
of a beast of prey — the tall, compact form. Added to 
all this, is the stamp of the secret power of genius, not 
only greatness of spirit, but also that mighty power of 
will, which instinctively binds the masses to him, and 
hurries them on with him, exerting the same magical 
influences that the eyes of snakes effect upon birds. He 
is a born ruler as he is presented to us, here, in the 
round tower, that Thekla pictures to us, in her inter- 
view with Max and Countess Terzky, carelessly leaning 
upon a celestial globe, having the representations of the 
planets behind him, and looking thoughtfully at the 



124 WALLENSTEIX. 

tables of figures before him, where the course of the 
stars is represented. It is their aspect, as he makes 
himself believe, which drives him to action, whereas, 
really, it is the very supreme voice of Nature that he 
follows. The indestructible, rock-like faith in himself, 
united with that confidence in special secret forces that 
, stand at his command — so often met in powerful natures 
— that connection with an immeasurable, superhuman 
realm, that runs through the whole play, only enhances 
the spell with which the hero binds us. 

As the poet paints the whole course, step by step, of 
Wallenstein's treachery to the emperor/and suffers us to 
see all the motives of his heart, he does it with a skill, 
the like of which is nowhere to be found in German art. 
Accident, destiny, and necessity are here woven together 
in a manner which does not release our attention an 
instant, nor allow us to falter in our admiration of the 
hero whose mighty self-deception we even understand, as 
we see him led into error about things which commoner 
natures around him see completely through. He often 
seems to us a kind of sleep-walker, and yet we believe 
in his intellectual power, because we see that it springs 
from the same source with the inspiration of genius. 

In amazement at his greatness, we almost forget to 
blame his boundless egoism, and the coldness with which 
he sacrifices every thing to the Moloch of his ambition — 
the only child, the wife, the youthful friend — till destiny 
grasps and crushes him beneath the ruins of his shattered 



WALLEN STEIN. 125 

building, just at the time when, externally blinded by 
the pure offering of Max, he believes vengeance removed 
from his own head : 

" The unpropitious gods demand their tribute. 
This, long ago, the ancient pagans knew, 
And therefore of their own accord they offered 
To. themselves injuries, so to atone 
The jealousy of their divinities, 
And human sacrifices bled to Typhon. 
I, too, have sacrificed to him ; for me 
There fell the dearest friend, and through my fault 
He fell. No joy from favorable fortune 
Can overw'eigh the anguish of this stroke. 
The envy of my destiny is glutted ; 
Life pays for life. On his pure head the lightning- 
Was drawn off, which would else have shattered me." 




t2o^i-7z/&y CZ^&6%> 



,:' 



COUNTESS TERZKY. 

( Wallenstein.) 

If, in Thekla, we see the ideal nature of woman 
portrayed in its fairest light, in Countess Terzky the real 
side of woman is pictured with perhaps greater skill. 
Countess Terzky is, unquestionably, one of Schiller's most 
perfect creations. Had she a less ambitious spirit, were 
she struggling for a lower goal, she had been a common 
intriguante. As the poet has represented her to us, she 
is not that, for, although her weapons are taken partially 
from the arsenal of intrigue, they are everywhere 
ennobled by the masterly ability with which she uses 
them. The charge has often been brought against 
women, that they make no use of intellect and under- 
standing — that they do not summon these gifts to help 
them in higher tasks — but that they generally follow 
common ends and arbitrary caprices, using their acumen 
alone as their ally. Countess Terzky shows us what is 
unlike this, and thereby proves her greater nature. 
With Max she uses the smaU methods of intrigue, with 
her brother-in-law she employs a fine womanly dialectic, 



128 COUNTESS TEE ZKY. 

but she calls them both to her aid in order to support 
the world-embracing plans of Wallenstein, whose com- 
prehensive mind finds in her a perfect echo. She is the 
only woman who understands him, and approves his 
schemes. Thekla is too much a woman to seek any 
other satisfaction than that of her heart ; she is merely 
of a lofty temper, whereas Countess Terzky is her equal 
in greatness of soul, and her superior in high spirit. 
That, with all this, she trifles with the fortune of two 
men, repels us just as in women all superiority of under- 
standing over feeling does. But we must confess that, 
from her point of view, she is right. 

What to her is Max ? — a good-natured, enthusiastic 
young man. What Thekla — a girl just from boarding- 
school — compared with the fortune of whole lands, 
compared with the father's gigantic plans, compared 
with him who is confessedly the highest existence that 
has interest to her ? To woman the ideal becomes 
personal, the abstract leaves her always cold, and only 
the concrete united to a person can stir her enthusiasm. 
The whole soul of the ambitious, great-hearted woman 
has therefore turned to the brother-in-law, who repre- 
sents her ideal of a man — whose bold, comprehensive 
character completely corresponds to her own, whom she 
alone completely understands, and upon whom, there- 
fore, she exercises an influence so great, since, as a 
woman, she possesses much the same power of will and 
knowledge of the human heart with him ; and is a 



COUNTESS TEEZKY. 129 

statesman, almost as much as lie. How skilful she is 
in the art of guiding men, the poet has happily repre- 
sented in the scene where she seeks to make herself 
sure of Max, while promising him the possession of 
Thekla : 

" Enjoy your fortune and felicity. 
Forget the world around you, meantime friendship 
Shall keep strict vigil for you — anxious, active. 
Only be manageable when that friendship 
Points you the road to full accomplishment" — 

or when she says — 

" Yet I would have you look, and look again, 
Before you lay aside your arms, young friend. 
A gentle bride, as she is, is well worth it, 
That you should woo and win her with tie sword" — 

or when she tries to set Thekla right : 

" Did you suppose your father had laid out 
His most important life in toils of war. . . . 

For this only 
To make a happier pair of you. . .'. 

All this methinks 
He might have purchased at a cheaper rate. 
Leave now the puny wish — the girlish feeling ; 
Oh ! thrust it far behind thee ! Give thou proof 
Thou art the daughter of the mighty. . . . 
Not to herself the woman must belong." 

Still more masterly is her dialectic with Wallenstein, 
when she urges him to come, at last, to the decision to 
break with the emperor. With what fineness does she 

17 



130 COUNTESS T.EKZKY. 

toucli all the chords which must resound iu the heart of 
this man ! How skilfully does she urge the sophism : 

" Planned merely, 'tis a mortal felon}' ; 
Accomplished, an immortal undertaking ; 
And with success comes pardon hand in hand, 
For all event is God's arbitrament " — 

endeavoring to build a bridge for the statesman's moral 
scruples, and release him from the duty of thankfulness : 

" No honest good-will was it that replaced thee — ■ 
The law of hard necessity replaced thee, 
Which they had fain opposed, but that they could not" — 

and to show him how he will remain in harmony with 
himself, if he puts an end to the rebellion : 

" Therefore, duke, not thou 
Who hast still remained consistent with thyself, 
But they are in. the wrong, who, fearing thee, 
Intrusted such a power in hands they feared. 
For, by the laws of spirit, in the right 
Is every individual character 
That acts in strict consistence with itself." 

Countess Terzky is too much a woman, and loves 
Wallenstein too deeply, to use this language if she 
did not feel that it is really the deepest emotion of 
her heart that she speaks out. If she is correct in 
this, she reckons falsely in her belief that she can draw 
Thekla into her father's plans — the same mistake that 
all politicians are apt to make, when they try to lead 
idealists, who are, generally, all the more stubborn, 



COUNTESS TEE ZKY. 131 

where the politician sees no possibility of taking but 
one way. 

Yet ; if her understanding leads her astray, her heart 
is all the surer a guide. Her secret love to Wallenstein, 
which she does not herself know, but which is the 
turning-point of her whole nature, and compels her to 
face death with him, appears everywhere in the closing 
scenes, and wins our whole sympathy. Who can fail to 
be moved when this colossal, great-minded, keen-witted 
woman, suspecting the tragedy that is to come, drops 
the words : 

" If all should fail, 
If he must go over to the Swedes 
An empty-handed fugitive, and could himself 
Endure to sink so low, I would not bear 
To see him so low sunken ! : ' — 

or when, misfortune having already broken out, she 
implores him not to leave her behind . 

" Leave us not in this gloomy solitude 
To brood o'er anxious thoughts ; the mists of doubt 
Magnify evils to the shape of horror" — 

even where her whole love becomes visible, as she 
seeks to nerve him up : 

" Oh ! remain thou firm, 
Sustain, uphold us, for our light thou art." 

How strong this passion was, is displayed best in 
her death-scene, where she scarcely alludes to Terzky — 
only speaks of Wallenstein, and completely compels 



132 COUNTESS TERZKY. 

our admiration by the greatness of soul with which, 
uniting her destiny with his, she speaks her dying 
words : 

" We did not hold ourselves too mean to grasp 
After a monarch's crown. The . crown did fate 
Deny, but not the feeling and the spirit 
That to the crown belong. We deem a 
Courageous death more worthy of our free station 
Than a dishonored life. I have taken poison ! " 



OCTAVIO PICCOLOMINI. 

( Wallenstein.) 

The representation which we give of Octavio will 
disappoint most persons who examine this work. They 
will have represented the old fox to themselves as 
immoderately thin, dark, possibly bald ; and will find 
themselves looking at a portly, heavy man, having, at 
worst, a mere snakish expression. The artist freely 
confesses that he formerly cherished this common idea 
of Octavio, deriving it, unquestionably, from the fact 
that he is generally represented so in the theatre. Only 
acquaintance with portraits of the historical Octavio, of 
which there are so many — some of them really admirable 
— has brought him to a conception of the character 
different from the one generally entertained. The calm 
coldness — the ground - feature in the character of the 
cosmopolitan Octavio — comports very well with perfect 
digestion ; a thick, bloated face conceals all the better, 
in its soft fat, the most dangerous thoughts, the lurking 
look, the sharp, observing eye. Of the soldier, Octavio 
has only the cold-blooded, undisturbed courage while in 



134 OCTAVIO PICCOLOMINI. 

the greatest peril ; his enemies say of him that he is 
better adapted to intriguing than to leading an army, 
which merely means that he is more a statesman than a 
general — has more understanding than kindling force of 
will ; for that he is richly endowed is shown by each 
one of his expressions : eloquent, courtly, polished, he 
chooses all his words deliberately, but tips them so 
sharply that, like an arrow, they strike directly at the 
heart of the thing or the person. While in Mas there is 
a thoroughly true German nature, lacking not only the 
Italian's native love of intrigue, but, in the highest 
degree, opposed to it, in Octavio the keen, ultramon- 
tane spirit is unmistakable. In this view he is a 
worthy adversary of Wallenstein — the only one of all 
the generals who has loftier views, these being wanting 
even to Max ; they all regard war as their vocation — as 
the task of life which they are to undertake for itself 
alone, and carry cheerfully on ; he alone recognizes it as 
a mere means, the extremest and saddest, too, that can 
be appealed to, and says : 

" There exists 
A higher than the warrior's excellence. 
In war itself, war is no ultimate purpose." 

The superiority of his mind explains completely the 
immense influence that he exerts upon the conclusions of 
the other generals ; they merely bow before the power 
of his reasons ; he leads them according to his views, 
because he knows the motives which make an impres- 



OCTAVIO PICCOLO MINI. 135 

sion upon every one, and thus secures men to himself, 
whom Wallenstein gains only by the power of his will, 
and the magic of his person, to be alienated from him 
afterward by the cooler and baneful superiority of his 
adversary. 

Octavio is too much a diplomatist, too much a man 
of intellect, to have the Friedlander's genuine hero- 
nature, although his thought never runs in low currents. 
His prudence, his calm repose, are so strongly developed 
qualities, that they dominate wherever he is ; and while 
one portrays him as an old fox, another as a deceitful 
cat, he is never known as the crafty Italian. Like all 
gifted men without real creative power, he awakens 
antagonism, and is compelled to show us, in advance, 
the points in which he is superior — a thing that can be 
done only by displaying his inner nature. Wallensteiu 
is as little a man of real rectitude as he, follows personal 
ends no less, chooses moral means no less, and only 
escapes condemnation because he charms his adversaries. 
Octavio's ends can as little stand before the judgment- 
seat of morality as WaUenstein's. He is no more honor- 
able to his friend, when the latter becomes a traitor, and 
his justification to Max, when the latter accuses him of 
falsehood — 

" Dear son, it is not always possible 
Still to preserve tbat infant purity 
Which the voice teaches in our inmost heart. 
Still iu alarm, forever on the watch 
Against the wiles of wicked men, e'en Virtue 



136 OCTAVIO PICCOLOMINI. 

Will sometimes bear away her outward robes, 
Soiled in the wrestle with Iniquity. 
This is the curse of every evil deed, 
That, propagating still, it brings forth evil. 
I do not cheat my better soul with sophisms ; 
I but perform my orders. The emperor 
Prescribes my conduct to me. 
Better far were it, doubtless, if we all 
Obeyed the heart at all times ; but so doing, 
In this our present sojourn with bad men, 
We must abandon many an honest project" — 

is, after all, better grounded than the sophisms with 
which Wallenstein palliates to himself his own breach 
of trust. Falling away from one who is untrue to 
himself is, at least, no treachery like that of the latter ; 
and if he appears more hateful than the one who is his 
own betrayer, it is simply because the poet unsparingly 
shows us the petty and dishonorable means which he 
uses in order to retain the army for the emperor ; while 
those of Wallenstein, to lead it into revolt, are merely 
hinted at — nay, even ascribed to others. It repels 
us when we hear how Wallenstein, everywhere, gives 
him his confidence, and even excuses him, while 
we hear Octavio say that he has surrounded the 
general with spies, and see how he takes Buttler and 
Isolani on their weak sides. Yet the Friedlander 
is certainly no more upright in his relation to the 
cuirassiers, Buttler, and even Max. Octavio char- 
acterizes his relation to him best when he says to 
Questenberg : 



OCTAVIO PICCOLOMINI. 137 

" Beware you do not think 
That T, by lying arts and complacent 
Hypocrisy, have skulked into his graces, 
Or with the substance of smooth professions 
Nourish his all-confiding friendship. No ! 
Compelled alike by prudence and that duty 
Which we all owe our country and our sovereign 
To hide my genuine feelings from him, yet 
Ne'er have I duped him with base counterfeits." 

Iii the superstitious confidence which Wallenstein 
places in him, not at all rooted in his own dependence 
upon him, but only in his holding him to be the 
most skilful instrument of accomplishing his plans, 
there scarcely rests an obligation to become the tool 
as well. 

Our whole sympathy is at last turned to him again, 
when we find this man of such marked intellectual 
strength approachable on one side by love and tender- 
ness ; it touches us when we see how his son's youthful 
purity, which he himself could not sustain in the battles 
of life, was so dear to him in his Max. It is one of the 
most poetical touches in the piece that Fate strikes the 
sly Octavio with its cruel scorn exactly there, where he 
is the most sensitive ; and shows in him, no less than in 
Wallenstein, that one may reckon ever so skilfully, and 
yet the sum come out wrong at last. 







lO 



U*W 



MAX PICCOLOMINI. 

( Wallenstein.) 

It is a fact as striking as it is consoling, that, 
precisely in the times of the deepest corruption, discord, 
intrigue, even ceaseless bloodshed, and the horrors of all 
kinds which are the inseparable companions of protracted 
civil wars, solitary natures appear which are untouched 
by the general evil, and maintain an incomprehensible 
purity and maidenhood. Unfortunately, it is just these 
natures which are destined to be sacrificed, apparently 
fruitlessly, which struggle in vain against the current of 
general chaos, and, snatched away by it, perish in its 
waves. But their portraits, and the memory of them, 
are imperishable, and, just as virtue — betrayed, scorned, 
and despised — always gains the victory, and rises from 
the flames of earthly trouble purified and glistening, so 
do these natures, stimulating kindred souls to a noble 
emulation. Such have been the Christian martyrs, such 
uncounted heroes of faith, science, and art ; such our 
immortal Schiller has portrayed in Max and Thekla. If. 
in the raging tide of reckless passions, they do perish, 



140 MAXPICCOLOMINI. 

every noble spirit is strengthened by looking upon 
them, and so they fulfil the mission for which the poet 
has adorned them with all the charm of his genius, and 
crowned them with garlands, as offerings are crowned. 

The first and most genuine qualities of a man, whose 
possession always insures our sympathy, but whose want 
is never forgiven, are spirit — honor. On this account 
Schiller portrays the youth who, in the development of 
the play, is to call out our sympathy above all other 
men, as the young hero, on whose dark locks the laurel 
already glitters ; and Isolani says of him, " Now shall the 
hero be prepared." He is portrayed to us not only as 
brave ; the first deed which is told us of him is an act of 
love and self-sacrifice — he delivers his father from 
the ranks of his enemies. Even in " The Camp," the 
dependence of the brave knight is shown, in the young 
man's being chosen as a leader, and the reputation which 
he enjoys with the other regiments is shown in their all 
choosing him to deliver their petition. They show that 
the true son of the camp must reflect in his own soul 
what beats within every genuine soldier's breast ; he is 
the fairest type of that genuine, national soldier's spirit, 
whose portraiture receives its highest poetic consecration 
in Wallenstein. That the poet shows us how so many 
thousand heroic hearts choose this fiery youth as their 
representative, is certainly a completely correct feature 
of the picture ; but if, thereby, he puts him in a high 
place, he is yet more exalted in our eyes when we see 



MAX PICCOLOMINI. 141 

how Wallenstein honors and loves the genuine hero- 
nature in him, feels a relationship of soul to him, is borne 
away, enchanted, by the stream of his pure, youthful 
sensibility, which, on every occasion, breaks out full and 
crystal clear. He says of him : 

" For oil ! he stood beside me like my youth, 
Transformed for mc the real to a dream, 
Clothing the palpable and the familiar 
With golden exhalations of the dawn. 
Whatever fortunes wait my future toils, 
The beautiful is vanished, and returns not." 

With a master's hand the poet displays all these 
qualities at the first appearance of Max, and shows us 
how, with all the enthusiasm of a youthful soul, he has 
knit himself to Wallenstein. This is portrayed, touch 
by touch, in the interview with Questenberg, as only a 
superior nature can do it ; and yet the whole portrait 
is idealized, because he only sees what finds an echo in 
himself. 

Tet Max has never known the charm of peace ; no 
conception of its quiet happiness has ever entered his 
war-accustomed soul, when the view of the blessings he 
enjoys is doubly enhanced by the love he experiences 
for a noble woman ; now, for the first time, he experi- 
ences, with rapturous longing, that there are other good 
things in the world besides the warrior's glory and the 
soldier's honors. 

To bind Max to himself, by such a bond, was a 



142 MAX PIC COLO MINI. 

master-stroke of his friend more advanced in years than 
he. But when he completely succeeds, as Max himself 
announces it — 

" How my heart pours out 
Its all of thanks to him ! Oh ! how I seem 
To utter all things in the dear name Friedland ! 
While I shall live, so long will I remain 
The captive of this name" — 

we are exasperated at the perfidy which must neces- 
sarily usher in the tragic end, and with the heartless 
egotism with which WaUenstein himself makes his friend's 
happiness an offering to his own ambition. 

Thekla suspects the dreadful truth better, when, after 
he has expressed his hope in her father in the words — 

'.' Let him 
Decide upon my fortunes. He is true ; 
He wears no mask, he hates all crooked ways, 
He is so good — so noble " — 

she replies : 

" That are you." 

As in Thekla, so in Max, the chief characteristic 
is a youthful strength of character — a fidelity to duty in 
all the conflicts of life. Incomparably fine is the opposi- 
tion with which he meets the dawning conviction of 
Wallenstein's treachery — the acuteness with which he 
conjectures all the motives that could drive him to it, 
and which yet might be excusable • they find an echo in 
his own pure breast, when, in the presence of his father, 
he breaks out into the complaint : 



MAX PICCOLO MINI. 143 

" You will, some time, with your state policy, 
Compel him to the measure. It may liappen, 
Because ye are determined lie is guilty, 
Guilty ye'll mate Lira " — 

Our interest in him is carried to the highest point when 
Wallenstein leaves no more room to doubt about his 
treachery, and the young man summons all the power 
of youthful eloquence to restrain him, moving Wallen- 
stein, though ineffectually, for an instant. 

When he sees that all is lost, that he has been alike 
deceived by the father and the general, an incurable 
break passes through his spirit, and he beautifully says : 

" Oh ! woe is me ! Sure I have changed my nature, 
How comes suspicion here in the free soul ? 
Hope, confidence, belief are gone ; for all 
Lied to me — all that I e'er loved or honored." 

But only those who are like-minded can completely 
understand each other; and, therefore, neither Octavio, 
Wallenstein, nor Countess Terzky rightly judges the part 
that Max will take in the contest, whereas Thekla at 
once feels, and with assured conviction asserts : 

" His resolution will be speedily taken. 
Oh ! do not doubt of that — his resolution ! 
Does there remain one to be taken ? " 

In this last interview, which he has with Wallenstein, 
we see him presented after he has laid the decision in 
Thekla's hands, and been directed by her to his first 
feeling, while repelled by all others. Despair at last 



144 MAX PICCOLO MINI. 

seizes his heart — the thought of seeking death over- 
comes him ; he yields to that immoderate sensibility 
which is peculiar to youth, and which never allows a 
way of escape to be seen ; he devotes himself, and 
the comrades who warn him of his hated duty, to 
destruction : 

" You tear me from my happiness ! Well, then 
I dedicate your souls to vengeance. Mark ! 
For your own ruiu you have chosen me ; 
Who goes with me must be prepared to perish." 




c~^€ 



THEKLA. 

( Wallenstein.) 

Among the female characters of the great poet, 
perhaps no one awakens so deep feeling as that of 
Thekla, whom he has adorned with all the magic of 
his poesy, and with all the splendor of language. 
The blinding wealth of the latter is so great, it draws 
out our sympathy for this lordly figure to such an 
extent, that we are seldom able to take account of 
her special qualities. Even in that cooler age of 
life, when we venture not only to smile at the many 
illusions of youth, but, unhappily, to wonder at the 
enthusiasm which we once knew to be genuine, and 
believed to be deserved, we sometimes find Thekla's 
character untrue to nature, and criticise it sharply. 
We should, indeed, be right in this, if virtue and 
honor, self-sacrifice, love, and a lofty spirit were also 
useless illusions of youth, instead of real and lofty 
good things, which are able to fill our whole heart, 
and feed our whole life — if he were not wretchedly 



146 T H E K L A . 

poor, who begins to doubt their existence, and con- 
sider them mere phrases. 

If the poet, in his great work, imputes fault and guilt 
to all, and yet lets the only innocent ones, Max and 
Thekla — these pure and youthful forms — fall as the first 
victims in this conflict of irreconcilable and selfish 
natures, the effect is all the more tragic and painful 
when we fully perceive that the necessity and inevita- 
bility of their destruction are caused directly by this very 
purity — this want of capacity of trifling with any moral 
condition, or any dictate of honor and duty. 

Thekla has just come from the convent ; the poison- 
ous breath of the world has destroyed none of her 
moral convictions, she has not yet learned to accom- 
modate herself to all changes, she is a thoroughly 
complete, unbroken nature — noble, enthusiastic, high- 
spirited, violent too, unbending, bold, and defiant — like 
her father. Into this soul, nourished hitherto in the 
quiet of the cloister, there streams, all at once, the sun- 
light of love, awakening her whole being into life, and 
bringing her instantly to a consciousness of all her 
powers. 

It is an old proverb — that love makes women 
wiser, but men blinder than they were before ; and 
so here, while Max no longer sees what is going on 
around him, the inexperienced, timid maiden — sud- 
denly made keen, strong, wise, and careful — detecting 
instantly where danger threatens her lover, and who is 



THEKLA. 147 

dealing honorably or falsely, warns Mas against " these 
Terzkys : " 

" Don't trust them, they are false. . . . 
I saw at once 
They had a puqnose. . . . 

To make us happy, 
To realize our union, trust me, love, 
They but pretend to wish it." 

She feels that she cannot build at all upon her 
mother ; she finds her father too busy : 

" Only he's so occupied, 
He has no leisure time to think about 
The happiness of us two." 

How absolutely this nature surrenders itself to 
the entire power of love, is shown by her care for 
her lover : 

"Where in this place couldst thou seek for truth, 
If in my mouth thou didst not find it ? " 

or when she sings : 

" I have enjoyed the happiness of this world ; 
I have lived, and have loved" — 

or when she says : 

" Is this new life which lives in me ? " 

In this passion, as in every other, the egois- 
tical element would trouble us, but Thekla's noble 
nature bears her over this rock, and, if she is 



148 T H E K L A . 

resolved to stake every thing on the possession of 
her lover — 

" The strong will I've learned to know, 
The unconstrainable in my breast, 
And I can reckon every thing at the highest " — 

she yet hallows this to our feelings by the boundless- 
ness of her sacrifice, but, most of all, in that love is 
more sacred than the lover — his honor is more to her 
than his person, and she hesitates not an instant in 
sacrificing her own happiness to his honor. That she 
would rather give up him, who is a god to her, than 
see a blot upon his reputation, is a feature that not 
only manifests her high spirit, but a genuine womanly 
character. 

The final scene, in which Max confides to her delicate 
feeling the decision respecting his action as well as his 
honor, is not only one of the most thrilling of the 
whole play, but it rests also on a deep knowledge 
of the human heart ; it is that genuine sensibility to 
every thing noble, in the true womanly nature, to 
which Max, burdened with tumultuous doubts, turns, 
and implores her : 

" Lay all upon the balance — all. Then speak, 
And let thy heart decide it" — 

and she replies : 

" Oh ! thy own 
Hath long ago decided. Follow thou 
Thy heart's first feeling" — 



T II E K L A . 149 

and then, full of presentiment, continues : 

" Even me 
My father's guilt drags with it to perdition." 

She demeans herself, as Friedland's proud daughter, 
when the evil day has broken upon her ; we see 
the working of a dark hopelessness upon a spirited 
soul, in her insisting upon hearing a second time 
the story of the Swedish captain. It is not empty 
pathos, but the dry tone of despair, which finds 
no relief in tears, Avhen she says reproachfully to 
Neubrunn : 

" Had lie a soft bed 
Under the hoofs of his war-horses?" 

At last she succumbs to the superhuman power of 
fate. After the destruction of her lover she does not 
wish to five, and gives plain expression to this when, 
thinking of his faithful companions, she says : 

" They would not 
Forsake their leader even in his death. 
Tbey died for him, and shall I live?" 

The artist has taken her in these last scenes. In 
the blond, maidenly face, with its lofty, intellectual 
brow ; large, eager eyes ; small, but decided mouth, 
with its full lips and its firm chin, we see the genuine 
daughter of her father. His boldness and unbending will 
are there, his egoism is translated into the enthusiasm 



150 T H E K L A . 

and idealism of the woman ; the pride of the nature 
born to command, and the native nobility, speak in 
the grand and royal form — not only of the head, but 
of the figure. There is something of the hero — there 
is something Titanic — in this blood ; this race can be 
crushed, but not bent. 







7 Cj^ tf 



THE CAPUCHIN. 

( Wallenstein.) 

There is a rudeness which, as the daughter of a 
natural coarseness, as well as of straightforwardness, and 
a sense of honor, is harmless, and must be put up with ; 
since what there is disagreeable in it is compensated by 
the fact that you, at least, know where to find the man 
who has it. But there is another kind, used only as a 
mask, to give a pretentious look to subtlety.. Of the 
latter dangerous sort, where the serpent of a priest's 
cunning lurks beneath the roses of a soldier's roughness, 
is that found in the Capuchin, whom Schiller introduces 
to us, to whom, in connection with the master of the 
guard, he has assigned the intriguer's part in the great 
trilogy, and who displays to us, at the very outset, 
where Wallenstein's chief enemies are to be sought. 

As an external profession, a channel for his secret 
activity, the duty is assigned him of caring for the 
spiritual concerns of the soldiers — of seeing that they 
are not wholly given over to evil. Certainly a hard 
task, and one that better men than he might fear, when 



152 THE CAPUCHIN. 

having to deal with such desperate patients, who say, 
as Hoik's Jager says : 

" Idle and heedless I'll take my way, 
Hunting for novelty every day." 

Further on we see the idea developed, when the same 
Jager says of the army : 

" One crime alone can I understand, 
And that's to oppose the word of command. 
What's not forbidden, to do make bold, 
And none will ask you what creed you hold." 

For comrades who hold such views, and whose ideas 
of duty are so general in their application, we want, of 
course, potent means, such as are given in the world- 
renowned, bold dialectics of the Capuchin. These are, 
perhaps, borrowed from the incomparable sermons of 
Abraham a Sancta Clara. At all events, Schiller has, 
unquestionably, been indebted to this immortal type of 
the tone of a Capuchin for the coloring of his own. 

In Schiller's friar we have, then, a philosopher of the 
Cynic order — not, by any means, a spare, black-galled 
fanatic, living, like the Preacher in the Wilderness, on 
locusts and wild honey, but a well-fed, red-haired, big- 
bellied parson, with powerful lungs and still better 
digestion, lacking neither in understanding nor in wit, 
least of all in a bull-dog spirit of contention, and a love 
of intrigue. He has become a priest, not from a spiritual 
nature, but because he is too lazy to do any thing else. 



THE CAPUCHIN. 153 

He has tried many parts iu the drama of life, and learned 
that, according to his way of thinking, they are all 
worthless. In order to be a Capuchin, one must be 
either tolerably stupid and bigoted, or have a strong- 
touch of humor, laziness, cynical contempt for good 
things, and a love of rule. Any other than such a 
rough and spendthrift growth would scarcely get on in 
the rude air of the camp. 

The Provincial Father of Vienna has given him 
complete instructions, and he appears upon the field 
of operations thoroughly equipped. At the outset he 
makes his points well, and, in the consciousness of their 
merits, the soldiers take very quietly the incisive words 
of praise which he deals out to them with drastic 
eloquence. We never oppose the truth when it surprises 
us, and is presented with courage and strength, least of 
all when humor and a piquant application take off what 
is most offensive ; and, in this play, the orator makes use 
of highly figurative speech for the manifest purpose of 
making his roughness more agreeable, and winning the 
regard of his hearers. 

He has probably hoped that, according to the old 
receipt, a half - dozen sentences strung together, and 
confessed to be indisputable, would pave the way for 
a false and sophistical application, which he might 
induce the hearers to swallow ; this stroke of policy 
often succeeds, particularly when a few good points are 
made at the end of all, and no time left for reflection. 

20 



154 THE CAPUCHIN. 

So, for example, if our Capuchin begins by painting 
the political condition, and says — 

" Why, folding your arms, stand ye lazily there, 
While the furies of war on the Danube now fare, 
And Bavaria's bulwark is lying full low ? " — ■ 

every one knows, nevertheless, that the army is here, in 
Bohemia, taking care of its belly, and " grumbling a 
little ; " and just as true it is that — 

" In sackcloth and ashes, while Christendom's grieving, 
No thought has the soldier his guzzle of leaving." 

There is very little to be objected when he goes on, and 
endeavors to discover the cause of the war, and says : 

" For sin is the magnet, on every hand, 
That draws your steel throughout the land. 
As the onion causes the tear to flow, 
So vice must ever be followed by woe " — 

or, when he discourses to the soldiers : 

" But he who 'mong soldiers shall hope to see 
God's fear, or. shame, or discipline, he 
From his toil, beyond doubt, will baffled return, 
Though a hundred lamps in the search he burn." 

Down to this point, what he says is incontestable, 
and is quietly put up with, either from a consciousness 
of fault, or as the result of his wit ; his words are even 
calculated to produce some effect, but, unfortunately, the 
orator, growing bold, in the hope of following up his 
good opening with what is false, loses all hold upon his 



THE CAPUCHIN. 155 

audience, when lie unmasks his battery, and begins to 
deal with calumnies : 

" But how should the slaves not from duty swerve ? 
The mischief begins with the lord they serve ; 
Just like the members, so is the head, 
I should like to know who can tell me his creed." 

This evidently purposed side-thrust at once calls forth 
opposition ; he seeks to do away with the effect by 
increasing his strokes, as well as by using a couple of 
incontestable arguments : 

" Did he not boast with ungodly tongue 
That Stralsund must needs to his grasp be wrung, 
Though to heaven itself with a chain it were strung ? " 

But going on with his calumny, and using these words 
about the general : 

"Denying, we know, 
Like Saint Peter, his Master and Lord below" — 

which the soldiers, at least, cannot know. And when, at 
last, he blurts out : 

" He calls himself rightly ttie stone of a wall, 
For, faith, he's a stumbblng-stone to us all" — 

it doesn't help him at all, and he sees upon his side only 
those who have not understood his words, and merely 
trust his black coat, the Croats. 

The same fate strikes the angry field-preacher which 
makes so many court-preachers its victim, who pursue 
just the reverse course to his, making men swaUow, with 



156 THE CAPUCHIN. . 

entire equanimity, a pack of nattering lies, because they 
taste well. But, in the end, the lies, as well as the liar, 
are cast out, as soon as the hearers understand the man, 
and have begun to mix a little unpalatable truth with 
the draught. In every case we find that, to preach to 
the mighty, whether it be a single man or a mass, is a 
hazardous thing, if there be knavery in the preacher's 
mind that untones the morality of his words. 




^aJc ■'.■:■ :■'..- 



GUSTEL YON BLASEWITZ. 

( Wallenstein.) 

A long period of war, like a long peace, calls forth 
peculiar characters — a class only possible under such 
circumstances. Wallenstein, Max, Isolani, and many 
others, cannot be comprehended, except in connection 
with this wearisome contest ; and just as little should we 
know the two worthies, to whom the duty has fallen, 
in the drama, of providing for the spiritual and the 
corporeal man — the Capuchin and Gustel von Blasewitz. 
These he makes play their part with so much energy, 
that, in spite of the few, though bold and secure, strokes 
by which they are painted, they are both impressed in 
the strongest manner upon our memory. This is par- 
ticularly the case with Gustel, who enjoys, therefore, a 
well-grounded popularity in both hemispheres, and has 
a great number of warm admirers among all recruits, 
cadets, and corporals, who betake themselves to belles- 
lettres during the numerous hours in which they are 
disengaged from duty. 

Schiller derived this comical name, as is well known, 



158 . GTTSTEL VON BLASEWITZ. 

from the daughter of a tavern-keeper in Blasewitz, a 
village on the shore of the Elbe, near Dresden, and 
directly opposite Loschwitz, the place of Schiller's 
sojourn at that time. The girl, who was renowned 
for her beauty, bore the real name of Augeste Segadin. 
Her charms drew a great number of young and merry 
spirits to the charming village on the river-bank, and 
among them was the poet. At that time he, in 
connection with Korner and Naumann, was having 
theatrical representations. He wished to secure the 
assistance of Gustel in these, but she always refused. 
He threatened, nevertheless, to bring her upon the 
boards, and out of this threat sprang the name that 
gave our Gustel a very unwilling and unwelcome im- 
mortality. With that excessive want of humor, which 
characterizes many of the Saxon maidens, she never 
pardoned the poet to her dying day. Soon after this 
Schiller episode, she married a Dresden senator, Renner 
by name, and died as recently as 1856, a widow of 
ninety-four years. She was always extremely sensitive 
when conversation turned upon this unwelcome part 
that she had played ; and we can readily understand 
that Schiller has made no use of the original, except to 
borrow her name. 

With all the divergence of the Gustel, whom the poet 
has represented as so stout and strong, from the over- 
precise senator's wife, yet she perhaps can claim just as 
respectable a number of admirers, and we can hardly 



GUSTEL VON BLASEWITZ. 159 

mistake if we conjecture that a large share of them are 
proud of her friendship. Even her " old acquaintance," 
taU Peter of Itzehoe, says : 

" Why Lave the lords of the regiment 
Lost their hearts over this pretty face ? " 

The epoch of her supreme brilliance is, to be sure, 
almost gone. The delicate little plant of former years 
has expanded into a more corpulent growth, and, during 
this incessant exposure of camp-life, has become rather 
weather-beaten. She is a person all the more strongly 
settled and self-centred, from the fact that the Scot, who 
had before travelled with her, had run away with every 
thing which she had laid up, and left her nothing but 
" the brat there," which the schoolmaster receives. If 
the Scotchman has robbed her of a good share of the 
material fruits gained in these campaigns, he could not, 
at any rate, take away all traces with himself, and " the 
tall Peter" answers tolerably ungaUantly to her remark 
— that she had seen many cities, and become acquainted 
with many customs since " the rough broom of war had 
swept her from place to place " — " Tes, you show it." 
Meanwhile, not every necessity of love seems to have 
been erased from this tender heart, and the black eyes 
look out tolerably inquisitively into the world ; only you 
notice that, in the genuine manner of hosts, her friendli- 
ness seems a little studied now, and put at the special 
service of those who drink several bottles of Melniker, 



160 GUSTEL VON BLASEWITZ. 

and — pay for them. In spite of her complaints and her 
everlasting trouble, she has prospered well in business, 
as may be seen from the fact that she is able to lend 
some cavaliers — among them, " the bad payer," Isolani 
— two hundred thalers, and that half the army stands in 
her books. Once in a while she decks herself out to the 
utmost ; beauties as much faded as hers bear much 
decoration. Whether she has paid hard money to the 
jeweller for her silver chains and garnets, or, in a 
cheaper fashion, gained them from Hoik's Jagers and 
Croats, for cancelled bottles of Melniker, we will not 
carefully inquire, but content ourselves with this, that 
" if the rose adorns itself, it adorns the garden too." It 
might be as little advisable, too, to make careful inves- 
tigations of what goodwife of Nuremberg or Pilzen she 
has " borrowed" the fur-hood with which she decks 
herself while in winter - quarters — a head-dress which 
hostesses seem to have taken a particular fancy to, they 
being met, at the present day, through all Bavaria — from 
Bohemia to Lake Constance — on the heads of well-to-do 
farmers' wives and peasant-women. 

Although we have such scanty hints respecting the 
past life of our Gustel, yet there are enough to convince 
us that her strong, sensuous nature, joined with a certain 
rude grace, was what carried her into the camp rather 
than any unhappy love. She does not appear to cherish 
the purpose of dying of a broken heart about that 
unhappy affair with the Scotchman, and, with the tact 



GUSTEL VON BLASEWITZ. 101 

of women of her class, she soon devotes herself to the 
education of the recruit who, as we know, " has expec- 
tations," and instructs him, without delay, in dancing. 
Whether she will impart to the novice any thing of the 
art of war we must leave an unsettled question ; but, as 
she speaks of " the best squadrons," she can, at all 
events, lay claim to the possession of no inconsiderable 
amount of strategy and tactics, and she appears to be at 
home in the art of taking by storm. 

If the poet has given us her portrait with a few 
masterly touches, he was, unquestionably, assisted by 
his own years of experience in the camp, where he, 
doubtless, met many such characters as she, whence 
he could readily borrow their language, if not their 
names. 

21 




' ' 



ELIZABETH, QUEEN OF ENGLAND. 

(Mary Stuart.) 

It would be interesting to know accurately the course 
of thought pursued by Schiller which led him to repu- 
diate his former views respecting that great queen, 
to whom England is indebted for a large share of her 
glory and prosperity ; to know what induced the poet 
to treat her with such repulsive hardness, and only 
here and there to recognize the energetic nature, the 
great, royal soul, the representative of the mighty prin- 
ciple of Protestantism ; whereas Mary, who represents 
Catholicism, is painted with all the intoxicating bril- 
liancy of color which characterizes her faith. This 
is a concession to romanticism not elsewhere met in 
Schiller. 

Even in the first act, where Burleigh indicates to 
Paulet the necessity for Mary's death, as well as the 
grounds that make the accomplishment of it perilous, we 
are prejudiced against Elizabeth : 

" She fears to speak her wishes, yet her looks, 
Her silent looks, significantly ask — 



Mi ELIZABETH, QUEEN OF ENGLAND. 

' Is there not one amongst my many servants 
To save me from this sad alternative ? ' " 

While the aversion of the Protestant people to Papal 
rule, as well as the wish, growing out of it, for Mary's 
execution, are thus painted — 

" This was the country's ceaseless fear — 
That she might die unwept by heirs, 
And England wear again the Papal fetters, 
If Mary Stuart followed, bearing rule " — 

we can, notwithstanding, scarcely discern the love of 
the people for Elizabeth. And if, on the queen's first 
appearance, she gives true expression to the feeling of 
her greatness in saying of her people — 

" A.nd I must offer up my liberty, 
My virgin liberty, my greatest good, 
To satisfy my people ! Thus they'd force 
A lord and master on me ! 'Tis by this 
I see that I am nothing but a woman 
In their regard. And yet methought that I 
Had governed like a man and like a king " — 

yet the hardness repels us with which, directly after, 
she runs away from Mary's petition for mercy ; as does 
the hypocrisy with which she meets Burleigh's plea that 
Mary's death is necessary, by a pretended horror at all 
bloodshed ; and as does the coldness with which, directly 
after, she takes up Shrewsbury in his defence of Mary — 

" Lord Shrewsbury is a fervent advocate 
For mine and England's enemy. I must 
Prefer those counsellors who wish my welfare" — 



ELIZABETH, QUEEN OF ENGLAND. 165 

indicating clearly enough, her own temper. Only once 
do we see her moved — when she receives Mary's 
letter ; and even then there is a touch of malice in 
her emotion when she sighs : 

" Oh ! what is man ? What is the bliss of earth ? 
To what extremities is she reduced 
Who with such proud and splendid hopes began ! 

But, directly afterward, she gives correct utterance to 
the feeling of tragic necessity, which compels her to 
destroy her adversary ; and while the result comes 
clearly before our eyes — 

" The blame will ever light on me — I must 
Avow it, nor can save appearances, 
That is the worst " — 

she yet exasperates us to the highest degree by the 
hypocrisy which she shows in trying to avoid this result, 
and the baseness with which, while she seeks to urge 
Mortimer on to murder the Scottish queen, she proposes 
to bestow her own favor upon him as the reward of his 
deed. Mortimer is entirely right when, passing judg- 
ment on this boundless egoism, he says that, being 
capable of no devotion to her, he deserves none from 
her to him. 

After this outbreak of mortal hatred and most 
repugnant wantonness, it is a relief when, in the presence 
of Leicester, she again becomes a queen : 



166 ELIZABETH, QUEEN OF ENGLAND. 

" But I am not so blest. "lis not my fortune 
To place upon the brows of him, the dearest 
Of men to me, the royal crown of England. 
The Queen of Scotland was allowed to make 
Her hand the token of her inclination. 
She hath had every freedom, and hath drunk 
E'en to the very dregs the cup of joy." 

But these reflections do not hinder her from appear- 
ing, directly after, with all her womanly weakness, and 
saying : 

" And is it really true that she's so fair ? 
So often have I been obliged to hear 
The praises of this wonder." 

Even the lower motive, which her favorite places 
before her, works upon her — 

" For though you should conduct her to the block, 
Yet would it less torment her, than to see 
Herself extinguished by your beauty's splendor. 
Thus can you murder her as she hath wished 
To murder you" — 

and she allows herself to be really drawn into the 
toils. 

In the celebrated scene that follows between the 
two queens, Schiller has again caused Elizabeth to 
appear in an odious light, and no less so when the 
queen speaks of the impossibility of a reconciliation 
between herself and the Church whose representative 
Mary is : 

" Your friendship is abroad, 
Your house is Papacy, the monk your brother." 



ELIZABETH, QUEEN OF ENGLAND. 167 

Here our understanding would be entirely convinced, if 
our feelings were not so deeply wounded at the dis- 
play of needless personal hatred against the unprotected 
enemy at her feet. 

Driven by this hate, exasperated to the utmost by the 
meeting with Mary, and the treachery of Leicester, she 
at last signs the death-warrant, but not without first 
ringing the changes of hypocrisy again, and also not 
without a presentiment that her purpose will not reach 
its goal : 

" Ah ! bow much I fear, 
If now I heed the multitude's demand, 
The time will come "when I shall hear 
A voice all different ! Yes, even they 
Who drive me now by force unto this deed, 
Will sternly blame me when the act is done." 

In this moment of anxious doubt and sudden deter- 
mination, the artist has caught Elizabeth ; and we 
believe that he wiU be completely justified, if the reader 
confesses that he has succeeded in bringing out what is 
great, colossal, and really kingly in her nature. 

If Elizabeth speaks of the certainty that the judg- 
ment has already been accomplished — 

li I am Queen of England ! 
Now have I room upon the earth at last. 
Why do I shake ? Whence comes this aguish dread ? 
My fears are covered by the grave. Who dares 
To say I did it ? I have tears enough 
In store to weep her fall " — 



168 ELIZABETH, QUEEN OF ENGLAND. 

it is at least true, if not noble ; and that the hypocrisy 
with which she tries to rid herself of the appearance of 
the deed finds no credence, that the deed itself does 
not bring her the fruit that she expects from it, since it 
robs her of her lover — the woman conquered, while the 
qneen triumphs — this is the tragic element in the destiny 
of this colossal character. 




i ■■ w '' 



, 



MARY STUART. 

(Mary Stuart.) 

The Scottish queen is indebted to the golden magic 
veil of poesy which our Schiller has woven about 
her fascinating head, if her memorial stands before us 
invested with all the glory of misfortune and an heroic 
death. In her the poet displays the inmost char- 
acter of woman more than in any other of his plays. 
Although, he ascribes to her the common infirmities of 
her sex, as weU as a certain intractableness of temper, 
yet he increases the power of her influence over others, 
by investing her with wonderful fairness and attractive- 
ness of soul, as well as of body. These qualities draw 
every one powerfully to her, while her fortunate rival is 
portrayed as the possessor of a spirit of evil, and a 
double-minded character, without any atoning features 
— a portrait which cannot be historically true. 

To such a degree has the poet thrown the charm of 
this mild beauty over the unfortunate queen, it per- 
meates and adorns every thing that she says and does 
to such an extent, that she appears to us all the more 

22 



170 MARY STUART. 

seductively the ideal of a weak woman, while he denies 
the faintest trace of such a gift to the more manly soul 
of her adversary, and compels us thereby to take part 
with him in favor of the fair unfortunate ; for who 
would not rather be infatuated by the charm of sense 
than led by the dry understanding ? 

If his portraiture has not divided, with historical 
accuracy, the light and shade between the two enemies, 
at any rate, Schiller is not silent respecting Mary's guilt. 
He paints it in the very outset of the play. Mary's own 
nurse says of the queen's relation to Bothwell : 

"Your ear was no more open to the voice 
Of friendly warning, and your eyes were shut 
To decenc3'; soft female bash fulness 
Deserted you. Those cheeks, which were before 
The seat of virtuous, blushing modesty, 
Glowed with the flames of unrestrained desire." 

But while he passes, with a few lines, over Mary's 
double guilt, from that time, on, we see only Mary's 
repentance and majesty — only the cruel tyranny that 
casts her down, only the wrong that is done her — and 
wonder at the courageous spirit, as she defends herself 
against Burleigh. 

If, in this brilliant defence, the unhappy sufferer wins 
our heart, she completely captivates us in the scene 
where she takes her walk in the park — a passage in 
which the utmost splendor of poetry is poured over her : 
and whose heart is not touched when the unfortunate 



MARY STUAET. 171 

woman emerges from her damp cell, which has for 
months enclosed her, and paints her hope and rapture 
in the words : 

" Freedom returns. Oh ! let me enjoy it ! 
Let me be childish — be childish with me. 
Have I escaped from this mansion of mourning ? 
Holds me no more the sad dungeon of care ? 
Let me, with joy and eagerness burning, 
Drink in the free, the celestial air. 
Fast-fleeting clouds, ye meteors that fly, 
Could I but with you sail through the sky, 
Tenderly greet the dear land of my youth ! " 

Do we not seem to hear the very beating of her heart, 
see the wringing of her hands, and the tears of the 
delighted woman ? 

The artist could scarcely have selected a more 
favorable moment for his delineation than this scene, 
which leaves no eye dry, and which makes us think 
entirely of the pain endured by this charming creation, 
and forget all her guilt. Even when her womanly 
anger flames up afresh, as she hears the approaching 
steps of her tormentor — 

" And nothing lives within me at this moment 
But the fierce, burning feeling of my wrongs, 
My heart is turned to direst hate against her" — 

we feel with her, as well as when it seems to her that 
nothing good can come out of it, since she herself is far 
removed from forgiving her adversary ; and that the 



172 MARY STUART. 

whole unbent pride of the queen lives in her when 
she says : 

" The voice of Heaven decides for you, my sister, 
Your happy trows are now with triumph crowned, 
I bless the power divine which thus hath raised you" — 

we find just as rational as that, when the woman in 
her is most deeply calumniated, she flashes up with a 
glow : 

" My sins were human and the faults of youth ; 
Superior force misled me. I have never 
Denied or sought to hide it. . . . 
Woe to you when, in time to come, the world 
Shall draw the rohe of honor from your deeds, 
With which thy arch-hypocrisy has veiled 
The raging flames of lawless, secret lust ! 
If right prevailed, you now would in the dust 
Before me lie, for I'm your rightful monarch." 

Here the colossal power of her nature breaks forth, and 
our fair queen thinks of nothing but the satisfaction at 
having gained the victory in this duel of tongues : 

" Now I am happy, Hannah, and at last, 
After whole years of sorrow and abasement, 
One moment of victorious revenge ! 
A weight falls off my heart, a weight of mountains, 
I plunged the steel in my oppressor's breast." 

But this triumph instantly brings the severest penalty 
that could come to her. Through Mortimer, it is 
shown to her that her enemy, Elizabeth, is really right, 
that she occupies a place, in the eyes of a friend and 
dependant, as low as in the eyes of her adversary ; and 



MARY STUART. 173 

learns of him that this supposed victory of hers has 
awakened nothing but the wildest sensual desires : 

" Thine is the palm, thou trodd'st her to the dust, 
Thou "wast the queen, she was the malefactor, 
I am transported with thy nohle courage, 
Yes, I adore thee — like a deity, 
My sense is dazzled by thy heavenly beams. 

.... How thy noble, 
Thy royal indignation shone, and cast 
A glory round thy beauty ! Yes, by beavens ! 
Thou art the fairest woman upon earth." 

And when she says, putting him off — 

" My woe, my sufferings should be sacred to you, 
Although my royal brows are so no more " — 

he has no other reply than — 

" Thou art not unfeeling, 
The world ne'er censured thee for frigid rigor; 
The fervent prayer of love can touch thy heart, 
Thou mad'st the minstrel Rizzio blest, and gavest 
Thyself a willing prey to Bothwell's arms" — 

certainly the lowest humiliation that could come to her. 

It is a peculiar feature of woman's character, that 
when the spirit to do has gone, that to bear remains. 
In this the weakest woman surpasses the strongest man, 
and even Mary finds her whole womanly purity and 
royal dignity again, when her every hope has vanished, 
and there remains no prospect except of the scaffold. 
From this time, on, we see only what is noble and 



IU MARY STUART. 

touching in her ; whether she shares the grief of the 
old knight, at the loss of his nephew, or comforts 
her women, or shows, at the confessional, the clearest 
insight into her faults — 

" My heart was filled with thoughts of envious hate, 
And vengeance took possession of my bosom. . . . 
Ah ! not alone through hate — through lawless love 
Have I still more abused the sovereign good" — 

or takes her leave of Leicester — 

" To woo two queens has been your daring aim. 
You have disdained a tender, loving heart, 
Betrayed it in the hope to win a proud one " — 

she never loses her calm, resigned dignity, and just as 
little her hold upon our constantly growing sympathy. 



LEICESTER. 

(Mary Stuart.) 

It is just those women who are richly endowed, and 
have powerful natures — this is an old experience — who 
commonly bestow their favor upon very unworthy men, 
and suffer themselves to be blinded merely by the 
sensuous charm of a handsome person. Thus far it 
is certainly a fine, psychologically correct touch, that 
Schiller portrays the lover of two great queens as an 
ignoble man ; that he endows him with an overweight 
of pitiful weakness, such as he gives to no other char- 
acter in any of his plays. This, doubtless, limits the 
tragical effect of Leicester's character, since horror, but 
certainly not disgust, belongs in the circle of emotions 
which tragedy should call forth. 

The effect of Goethean characters — such as Clavigo, 
Weisslingen, and others — appears here unmistakably ; 
but Goethe had the skiU to clothe these characters 
with a certain seductive amiability, which grows base 
out of weakness, and by no means out of a conscious 
purpose. Lord Leicester, on the other hand, has no 



176 L E I C E S T E E . 

particle of excuse for his baseness, nor does he reconcile 
us to himself by his death, as do Clavigo and Weisslingen, 
but, by his flight by ship to Frankfort, he puts the cap- 
stone upon his baseness. 

Let us endeavor to see what there is in him which can 
explain the tenderness of both the queens toward him. 

The first thing that we learn respecting him is, 
that Elizabeth's favorite, and Mary's lover, pronounced, 
without hesitation, at the court, in favor of the death 
of the latter ; but afterward, when Elizabeth appeared 
to give a favorable ear to the French propositions for 
an alliance, he betrayed her as well; in endeavoring to 
postpone the execution of the sentence. He makes here 
that notable, fine discrimination of his between the 
duties of the judge and the statesman — 

" 'Tis true T, in the court of justice, gave 
My verdict for her death. Here, in the council, 
I may consistently speak otherwise ; 
Here right is not the question, but advantage " — ■ 

which, at least, speaks favorably for his acumen, his 
practised skill, and presence of mind. Of these qualities, 
he gives, at once, a further proof, when Mary begs an 
interview with Elizabeth, and Burleigh dissuades the 
latter from it. Leicester knows, instantly, how to take 
Elizabeth on the weak side — 

" Let us, my lords, remain within our bounds. 
The queen is wise, and doth not need our couusels 
To lead her to the most becoming choice " — 



LEICESTER. m 

the language always addressed to princes when their 
flatterers seek to drive them to a foolish act, and an 
honorable man dissuades them. 

What his real relation to both the queens is, he 
confesses with cynic openness to Mortimer : 

" You seem surprised, sir, that my heart is turned 
So suddenly toward the captive queen. 
In truth, I never hated her. . . . 
Ambition made me all insensible 
To youth and beauty. Mary's hand I held 
Too insignificant for me. I hoped 
To be the husband of the Queen of England. 
Now, after ten lost years of tedious courtship 
And hateful self-constraint, oh, sir, my heart 
Must ease itself of this long agony. . . . 
To lose, and at the very goal, the prize ! 
Another comes to rob me of the fruits 
Of my so anxious wooing. . . . 
Thus fall my hopes. I strove to seize a plank 
To bear me in this shipwreck of my fortunes, 
And my eye turned itself toward the hope 
Of former days once more." 

A more amiable confession could scarcely be made, and 
it is not exactly conceivable how Mortimer could go a 
step farther in his confidence after it. 

A deep knowledge of woman's heart is certainly not 
to be denied to the smooth and courtly lord ; the most 
gifted woman Avould rather hear her skin praised than 
her brain ; and even Elizabeth, when she discovers him 
with Mortimer, is silenced when, with quick presence of 

23 



178 LEICESTER. 

mind, he pretends to be overcome by the splendor of her 
beauty. This single touch would be sufficient to clear 
Schiller of the reproach of not knowing woman's 
heart. 

When any one undertakes to lie to any man, but, 
more especially, to one of very superior mind, he ought 
not to do it on a small scale, but to pile up his false- 
hoods to a colossal height ; the little lie is much 
sooner detected than the big one. When it is "very 
steep," it is thought there must be something in it ; 
one would not venture so far with an understanding; 
known to be powerful. Care must be taken, in all 
these cases, that the he hinges directly upon what is 
either feared or wished. True to this prescription, 
Leicester says to Elizabeth — 

" But I love you, and were you born of all 
The peasant-maids the poorest, I the first 
Of kings, I would descend to your condition, 
And lay my crown and sceptre at your feet. . . . 

I placed, in thought, 
Tou and Mary Stuart side by side. 
Yes, I confess I oft have felt a wish, 
If it could be but secretly contrived, 
To see you placed beside the Scottish queen. 
Then would you feel, and not till then, the full 
Enjoyment of your triumph. She deserves 
To be thus humbled. She deserves to sec 
With her own eyes, and envy's glances keen, 
Herself surpassed ; to feel herself o'ermatched 
As much by thee in form and princely grace, 
As in each virtue that adorns the sex " — ■ 



LEICESTER. 179 

which is iu very striking contrast with what he has 
just said to Mortimer, but which is not without its 
effect. 

The interview has the well-known result, and Leices- 
ter sees himself read through and through by Burleigh ; 
then, in order to crown his deeds, with nimble craft he 
sacrifices Mortimer, the very man who wanted, magnani- 
mously, to rescue him. He even sets the capstone upon 
his treachery by insisting on the execution of the death- 
penalty pronounced upon Mary. Here, however, his fate 
overtakes him, announced by his adversary Burleigh's 
words : 

" Since, then, his lordship shows such earnest zeal, 
Such loyalty, 'twere well were he appointed 
To see the execution of the sentence." 

The nerves of the effeminate count were strong- 
enough to commit treachery, but they do not sustain 
him in meeting its results. Mary, in saying to him — 

" You keep your word, my Lord of Leicester, for 
You promised me your arm to lead me forth 
From prison, and you lend it to me now" — 

deservedly annihilates him. It is at this point that the 
artist has caught him. The lord does, indeed, make an 
effort to collect himself: 

" Wouldst thou not lose the guerdon of thy guilt 
Thou must uphold, complete it daringly. 
Pity be dumb, mine eyes be petrified : 
I'll see, I will be witness of her fall." 



I 



180 LEICESTER. 

But the pangs of his conscience do not permit him to do 
so, and he falls in a swoon. It is his destiny that his 
repentance should have the same effect that his crime 
has ; after betraying Mary by his double tongue, he 
betrays Elizabeth in his very remorse. 

A peculiar characteristic of all thoroughly base 
natures is, that, while regretting, indeed, all their evil 
deeds, they take all possible means to escape the results, 
instead of freely meeting the penalty of their own 
crimes j and so Leicester ends in flight- — true to his 
own character throughout the play — contemptible. 




/ Wa> 



MORTIMER. 

[Mary Stuart.) 

We have already repeatedly indicated, in our com- 
ments, that the characteristic which the German nation 
especially values in Schiller, is his vigorous manfulness. 
Nowhere is there to be detected in him a trace of that 
singular mixture of cretinism and genius, not a trace 
of that effeininateness which makes so many of our 
artists of the second and third class appear like sick 
oysters, whose artistic talent is their only pearl, and 
whose weakly nature has contributed so much to the 
popular belief that aesthetic endowment is, on the whole, 
a kind of disease which necessarily makes its possessor 
somewhat misshapen and unsound, or, at least, insipid. 
In itself, however, the artistic faculty is nothing un- 
natural, nothing destructive of the harmonious wholeness 
of a man, nothing that must weaken his energies ; on 
the contrary, every great man has something of the 
poet and the artist in himself, and perhaps they, most of 
all, who, like generals and statesmen, are the farthest 
removed from artist ranks. 



182 MORTIMER. 

The manly energy, the fresh spirit which have been 
exhibited in Mortimer, are the qualities which, in a 
measure, reconcile us to him, who has no other attributes 
calculated to awaken our interest, despite the seductive 
power of the language which the poet puts in his mouth, 
and which compels us all the more to express our views 
respecting his character as sharply as possible. Shorn 
of these advantages, almost every thing about him is 
ignoble. His characteristic quality is marked sensu- 
ality ; not only his passion for Mary breathes the wildest 
ardor, but his going over to Catholicism is the result 
merely of the intoxication which the wonderful works 
of art, in Rome, have wrought upon his fanciful 
nature — Raphael's women, Palestrina's music, Michael 
Angelo's domes. He is, completely, a romanticist ■ it 
is not the germ of things that attracts him, it is the 
artistic form that infects him ; so, directly after his 
religious conversion, he goes into merry society, passes 
from Romish ecclesiastical festivals to the " cheerful 
scenes of France," and ripens these for the cardinal, 
who — 

" Showed me how the glimmering light of reason 
Serves but to lead us to eternal error, 
That what the heart is called on to believe 
The eye. must see." 

But, if reason causes us thus to err, it is not clear 
why God has bestowed it ; and it is no plume in 
the cap of Catholicism that it must surrender this 



MORTIMER. 183 

faculty, however poetically the sacrifice may be pre- 
sented to us. 

Fanaticism and hypocrisy are twin - sisters, and so 
Mortimer makes, without delay, the acquaintance of the 
latter — unquestionably, the one most akin to the native 
reserve of an Englishman and his stubborn egotism. He 
learns the '" difficult art of dissembling ; " he does not 
even blush at confessing, before the whole court of 
England and his queen, that he has acted in a manner 
which, in common life, is called infamous ; he even 
confesses that he has stolen into the confidence of the 
banished woman, and even made a pretence of sur- 
rendering his faith, in order to learn her purposes : 
" so far went my curiosity to serve thee " (Elizabeth) — 
a confession which, according to the opinions prevalent 
even then, would bring upon him the contempt of every ' 
man of honor. This he deserves, nevertheless, in spite 
of the want of truth in his confession, since it was 
entirely of a piece with all his conduct at the court of 
Elizabeth, and in relation to his own uncle. If this is 
reconcilable with honor, it is not clear where the bounds 
of the dishonorable be sin. 

Even Leicester, who, assuredly, was not a fool, 
deservedly says to him, in the scene in which the 
artist has portrayed him — 

" I see you, sir, exhibit at this court 
Two different aspects. One of them must be 
A borrowed one." 



184 MORTIMER. 

That his love to Mary, in like manner, has its source 
merely in sensuality, is everywhere shown us by the 
poet, whether Mortimer tells her what impression her 
picture made upon him, or confesses what impressions 
she herself makes upon him : 

" Your prison's infamy ! 
Hath it despoiled your beauty of its charms ? 
You are deprived of all that graces life, 
Yet round you life and light eternal beam." 

Even to the last interview, where, with his immoderate 
passion, he recalls to her her earlier amours, in order to 
justify his claims to her favor, and demanding it, at last, 
as the price of his service : 

" I will deliver you, and though it cost 
A thousand lives, I do it. But I swear, 
As God's in heaven, I will possess you too." 

Elizabeth shows that she discerns his motives 
with entire correctness, when she proposes to gain him 
over by promising him her favor, repugnant as is this 
touch of lechery in her ; and nothing justifies him in 
saying — 

" Go, false, deceitful queen ! As thou deludest 
The world, e'en so I cozen thee. 'Tis right 
Thus to betray thee, 'tis a worthy deed ; 
Look I, then, like a murderer ? " — 

and all the more, as directly afterward he shows that 
she was not fair enough to recompense him for his 
service ; whereas, without hesitation, he sacrifices every 



MOETIME E . 185 

thing that conies in his way for Mary ; he is willing- 
even to murder his uncle, because — 

" O'er her, in rounds of endless glory, Lover 
Spirits -with grace and youth eternal blest, 
Celestial joy is throned upon her breast." 

He has no superiority in morality, certainly, over 
Leicester, he surpasses him merely in spirit and in 
impudent daring ; and these qualities alone justify 
Mortimer — at the time when Leicester asserts that an 
effort to free Mary is not to be ventured upon — in 
hurling at the latter this reproach : 

" Too hazardous for you who would possess her, 
But we, who only wish to rescue her, 
We are more bold." 

This courageous spirit of youth reconciles us, in a 
measure, to him, when he says — 

" A daring deed must one day end the matter, 
Why will you not with such a deed begin ? " — 

or appeals to Mary : 

" The coward loves his life. . . . 
Whoe'er would rescue you, aud call you his, 
Must boldly dare affront e'en death itself." 

It even glorifies his end, when, betrayed by Leicester, 
he cries : 

" Infamous wretch ! But I deserve it all. 

Who told me, then, to trust this practised villain ? . . . 

Life is the faithless villain's only good." 
24 



186 M OETIMER. 

"We are never able wholly to withhold respect from 
hiin ; who is ready to pledge even his life in behalf 
of his convictions, be they ever so false ; or actu- 
ated;, as in Mortimer's case, by thoroughly egotistical 
motives. 




@^(2<z<6£e6a. 



BURLEIGH. 

{Mary Stuart.) 

If a statesman is to be rightly judged, lie must 
uot be viewed from tlie stand-point of private rights. 
Above all things else, the time and the circumstances 
amid which he lived must be made real. And so we 
see Burleigh emerging amid the most envenomed civil 
strifes, and, following him in his career, we see the 
success which at last crowns his efforts, and those of 
the queen, to give the realm a greatness hitherto 
unknown, and to secure peace, in its outward relations, 
at least ; yet all his efforts are constantly imperilled by 
the existence of a dangerous pretender to the crown. 

If, in Schiller's tragedy, in the two queens, an ex- 
clusive predominance is given to the mere womanly 
nature, the unatonable antagonism of two rivals, who 
contend not only for a single throne, but no less for a 
man loved bv them both, we see in the lord treasurer 
the cold representative of state -craft — the invincible 
advocate of the Protestant party. The impression of 
a certain measure of heartlessness in this one-sided 



188 BURLEIGH. 

prominence, given to understanding and reason, is un- 
avoidable, and Schiller has even intensified it by the 
addition of legal subtlety : Burleigh hates, in Mary, the 
Papist ; in Leicester, the favorite of the queen. He is 
completely indifferent in the choice of means, if he can 
only attain his end — as much so as Mortimer on the 
Catholic side. If, therefore, he appears to maintain, 
strongly, the great principles of justice, which every 
man may enjoy without distinction of person — 

" Where would be the state's 
Security, if the stem sword of justice 
Could uot as freely smite the guilty brow 
Of the imperial stranger as the beggar's ? " — 

yet Mary justly describes him, as well as his method of 
thinking, when she says to him, reproachfully, that, with 
him, advantage weighs more than justice. 

With cold blood he presses on as far as to the legal 
murder of Mary ; he would even be willing, in order to 
be merely free of the disturber of the peace, to insti- 
gate Paulet to become her assassin : 

" She scorns us, she defies us, will defy us, 
Even at the scaffold's foot. . . . 
The sword of justice which adorns the man 
Is hateful in a woman's hand. The world 
Will give no credit to a woman's justice, 
If woman be the victim. Vain that we, 
The judges, spoke what conscience dictated. 
She has the royal privilege of mercy, 
She must exert it. 'Twere not to be borne, 



BURLEIGH. 189 

Should she let justice take its full career ; 
Therefore, should she yet live ? Oh, no, 
She must not live, it must not be ; 'tis this, 
Even this, my friend, that so disturbs the queen. 



Well might it be avoided, thinks the queen, 
If she had only more attentive servants. 

Who, when a poisonous adder is delivered 

Into their hands, would keep the treacherous charge, 

As if it were a sacred, precious jewel ? " 

There is something that reminds ns of the old Cato's 
" Ceterum censeo," when we see the fixed, resolute man 
continually coming back, with fearful steadfastness of pur- 
pose, to his demand for the death of the Scottish queen — 

" They demand 
The Stuart's head. If to thy people thou 
Wouldst now secure the precious boon of freedom, 
And the fair light of truth so dearly won, 
Then she must die. If we are not to live 
In endless terror for thy precious life, 
The enemy must fall. . . . 

No peace can be with her and with her house. 
Thou must resolve to strike or suffer ; 
Her life is death to thee — her death thy life " — 

when he seeks to put out of the way every thing which 
could hinder the attainment of this goal, and, among 
others, the interview of Elizabeth and Mary — 

" For her, the base encourager of murder, 
Her who hath thirsted for our sovereign's blood, 
The privilege to see the royal presence 
Is forfeited. . . . 



190 BURLEIGH. 

She is condemned to death, her head is laid 

Beneath the axe, and it would ill become 

The queen to see a death-devoted head. '► 

The sentence cannot have its execution 

If the queen's majesty approaches her, 

For pardon still attends the royal presence " — 

and when, at last, after the unhappy result of the 
interview, and the attempt upon the queen's life, he 
believes the opportunity come to carry the sentence into 
execution, he hastens, with the utmost speed, to take 
advantage of Elizabeth's passionate excitement. Bur- 
leigh's decided character shows itself most in the scenes 
with the French ambassador, and with Leicester, whose 
artifices he quickly sees through, overwhelming him with 
cutting scorn • and, with cool villany, compelling him 
to be the very man appointed to lead Mary to her 
execution : 

" This same Mortimer 
Died most conveniently for you, my lord. 

Since, then, his lordship shows such earnest zeal — 
Such loyalty, 'twere well were he appointed 
To see the execution of the sentence." 

The vast superiority of the statesman's reasoning 
is shown in marked contrast with that of other men 
around him, who are impelled by their private passions 
merely, in the scene where Elizabeth hesitates to sign 
the death-warrant. From the moment when he says 
to her — ■ 

" Obey thy people's voice, it is the voice of God " — 



BTTKLEIGn. 191 

and sets aside Shrewsbury's objection that the queen, 
in her present humor, was not master of her own 
judgment — 

"Judgment has long been passed, it is not now" — 

down to the time when, with a frankness and a 
vehemence which only the consciousness of being the 
representative of a great principle can give, he holds up 
her duties to the queen — 

" Wait for it, pause, delay, till flames of fire 
Consume the realm, until the fifth attempt 
Of murder be successful ! God, indeed, 
Hath thrice delivered thee. Thy late escape 
Was marvellous, and to expect again 
A miracle would be to tempt thy God. . . . 
You say you love your people 'bove yourself — 
Now prove it. Choose not peace for your own heart, 
And leave your kingdom to the storms of discord. 
Think on the Church. Shall, with this Papist queen, 
The ancient superstition be renewed ? 
The monk resume his sway, the Roman legate 
In pomp march hither, lock our churches up, 
Dethrone our monarchs ? I demand of you 
The souls of all your subjects; as you now 
Shall act, they all are saved or all are lost. 
Here is no time for mercy ; to promote 
Your people's welfare is your highest duty. 
If Shrewsbury has saved your life, then I 
Will save both you and England, that is more " — 

and, with these words, regains the esteem which his 
apparent heartlessness withdrew from him, since we see 



192 BURLEIGH. 

that personal motives do not actuate him, but that the 
welfare of his country is the highest spur to all his 
actions. This nobler, grander sense of obligation does 
not take away from him the stiff, unbending air with 
which he brings the death-sentence to Mary, and receives 
her last wishes — the moment in which the artist has 
represented him. 



JOAN. 

(The Maid of Orleans.) 

So unrivalled .is the place that this enthusiastic girl 
occupies in history, that, on that very account, she is 
even at this present time an object of contemplation and 
of wonder for the statesman and politician, as well as 
of the devotion and the completely justified reverence 
of every sensitive heart. All the explanations which 
have been made of this remarkable episode in French 
history have served, not only to increase the impression 
of astonishment, but also to perfectly justify Schiller's 
conception of Joan, and have been steadfastly opposed 
to the really obnoxious manner in which a few of her 
own countrymen have made her a subject of the most 
frivolous wit and the most common ribaldry. Voltaire, 
in especial, has exhibited a conspicuous instance of his 
low tone of thought in his notorious " Pucelle." 

Recent historical investigations confirm, as before 
remarked, Schiller's representation of the youth and 
the probable solitary training of the maid. We meet 
her in the seclusion of shepherd - life, whose isolation 

25 



194 JOAN. 

so strongly tempts the spirit to contemplation, to deep 
introversion, to fanaticism ; and, in this retired life, she 
has become capable of that lofty enthusiasm and that 
glow of ecstasy which she exhibits ; she has, moreover, 
been driven to the necessity of cultivating the utmost 
courage of spirit, in consequence*of her defencelessness 
in the wild haunts which she frequented. She delights 
in her youthful years, and in her blossoming beauty ; 
she has just entered the age which is decisive with her 
destiny as a maid — the age when that impiilse awakens, 
which either finds its fulfilment in love, as is the case 
with most women, or, as sometimes occurs, which 
prompts one to follow some ideal interest, ordinarily 
that of religion. With Joan's lofty spirit, the choice 
must be the latter ; an inclination to undertake a mis- 
sion, and even the appearing of visions, were what 
would be expected in such a soul; and, unquestionably, 
a person in her condition would necessarily take hold of 
that which most moved her being. That, at her time, 
the dull roar of the tempests, that were raging through 
her native land, at length penetrated her ear too, and 
filled her heart with fierce hatred against the cruel 
oppressors, is perfectly comprehensible ; and no less so 
is the immense effect which it could awaken in this 
spirit, which was only seeking an occasion to call out its 
latent enthusiasm. 

Upon this simple and colossal nature the thought of 
her country's need fell like a spark, that set her whole 



JOAN. 195 

soul on fire. A worthy goal had only been wanted to 
raise her soul to the greatest ecstasy, in which she must 
seem like a riddle to her relatives, whose souls were not 
capable of a like impulse. To a spirit highly stimulated, 
and naturally heroic, the wish to attempt the delivery of 
her country was not so far removed, but that dreams 
and visions in the night should seem to make the 
deliverance of the nation a call of duty. 

That the sudden appearance of the enthusiastic 
maid amid a people which, at every time, is capable 
of passing from extreme depression to the greatest 
enthusiasm, and the reverse, must have kindled the 
popular zeal all the more, if she emerged into public 
view at the time when the national hopelessness, 
begotten by the indecisive bearing of the king, had 
reached the highest point ; and when the nation, dis- 
couraged by long misfortune, exasperated to the utmost 
by oppression, could say to itself- — 

" Worthless is the nation that stakes not 
Its all with cheerfulness upon its honor" — 

that her appearance should effect all this, although 
remarkable and interesting in the highest degree, is by 
no means explicable. 

On the contrary, that, at the first surprise of the 
nation, she could effect that transformation into an 
enthusiasm which overcame every thing in its way, 
is all the more clear, from the fact that numerous 



196 JOAN. 

prophecies had prepared the minds, not only of the 
masses, but also of scholars, to expect such a wonder- 
ful phenomenon as her appearance. But, in Joan's 
feeling at the same time that, by this warlike mission, 
she was stepping out of the circle imposed upon her 
by virtue of her sex, the thought suggests itself at once 
to her, in full accordance with the spirit of her age, that 
this step is only to be atoned by renouncing earthly love, 
as one consecrated to God. Moreover, it is a confident 
belief in her mission which is displayed, when she feels 
herself pledged to spare no enemy, and strikes down 
young Montgomery without any compunctions of con- 
science ; and so, too, when, confronting him, she utters 
her belief in her obligation to show no mercy — 

" I'm bora a shepherd-maid. 
This hand, accustomed to the peaceful crook, 
Is all unused to wield the sword of death. 
Vet, snatched away from childhood's peaceful haunts, 
From the fond love of father and of sisters, 
Urged by no idle dream of earthly glory, 
But Heaven-appointed to achieve your ruin, 
Like a destroying angel I must roam, 
Spreading dire havoc round me, and, at length, 
Myself must fall a sacrifice to death. 
Never again shall I behold my home : " — 

and so she feels, too, after passing so completely and 
irrevocably from the wonted place of woman, that she 
cannot return thither, that she must not only sacrifice 
victims, but be one herself. But when this self-deny- 



JOAN. 197 

ing, womanly heart asserts its rights, when, at Lionel's 
glance, love approaches her, this feeling confuses her, 
and appears to her a crime : 

" What ! I permit a human form 
To haunt my bosom's sacred cell, 
And there, where heavenly radiance shone, 
Dotli earthly love presume to dwell ? 
The savior of my country, I, 
The warrior of God most high, 
Burn for my country's foeman ? " 

All intense excitement, like that which carried Joan 
away, and the people with her, gives place to a sense of 
satiety and exhaustion when its goal is reached, and, as 
a result of this necessary reaction, we have to view what 
occurred after the entry into Khehns— the accusation 
of her own father, and the ingratitude of the court. 
Meantime, Joan's own consciousness of guilt prevents 
her quickly replying to the accusations urged, and 
permits her to doubt as to the validity of her own 
mission, ■ and at the very instant when the result of her 
heroism was most triumphantly displayed. The reason 
was, that after having once renounced nature, she felt 
that the return to it would be a contradiction — a want 
of loyalty. Perceiving this satiety and exhaustion around 
her, she doubts still more about herself; what had just 
appeared to her as a calling from God, seems to her 
now, if not a delusion of the devil, yet, at least, a trial 
which she must bear as a penance. 

Like the whole nation, she, too, finds her faith in 



193 JOAN. 

her high mission return to her, in its full strength, when 
pressing need approaches anew ; her old enthusiasm 
overcomes her afresh, leading her to victoiy and to 
death, and causing her to utter once more the feeling 
of regained harmony with herself: 

" No, I am not a sorceress ! Indeed 
I am not one. . . . 

Yes, all around me now seems clear again : 
That is niy king ; these banners, here, of France ; 
My banner I behold not. Where is it? 
Without my banner I dare not appear ; 
To me it was confided by my Lord, 
And I before His throne must lay it down. 
I there may show it, for I bore it truly." 




'II 



Hill 



J> V: 




..'.V^/ 



CHARLES VII. 

{The Maid of Orleans.) 

Dilettanteism is everywhere repugnant, but it is full 
of profoundest danger when a king takes it to the 
throne, not in peaceful times, but amid wild, warlike 
times, which demand a whole man, and find nothing 
but an art-loving weakling. 

Charles TIL, as Schiller, closely following history, 
pictures him, is such a dilettante king ; very " respect- 
able" and well brought up, he never does any thing 
ungracefully ; having a fine gift of language, he always 
makes beautiful speeches, full of delicate fancy, Avhen 
actions are wanted ; he wishes well to every thing, but 
has power for nothing. Take hold of him firmly, and 
he shrinks back. He is like snow, that never holds an 
impression, and melts in your hands when you think you 
have secured it. For all his gentle, good wishes, of 
which he is full ; for all his sighs and moans over the 
misery of his country, he is still able to keep himself in 
the best possible condition — he makes verses, he has 
them sung before him ; he loves artists and hates soldiers, 



200 CHARLES VII. 

Were lie deprived of his artist friends, he would cer- 
tainly love soldiers, for, at bottom, it is a sense of duty 
which is hateful to him ; he wants mere pleasures ; he 
would like to make his people happy, yet without any 
effort of his own. Like all weak natures, he lays great 
stress on external appearances ; a prescribed form must 
make up for hollowness within ; nothing is so repugnant 
to him as Dunois's rough modes of speech ; had court 
etiquette not been invented long ago, he would certainly 
have brought it into vogue, in order to keep himself free 
from every thing that might disturb his sentimental and 
romantic inclinations. So, when he first comes before 
us, he is glad to be free of the Connetable ; his joy at 
this far surpasses the humiliation and the pain of sur- 
rendering all his territory as far as to the Loire. On 
this account, too, is love so important to him, and Agnes 
so dear ; she supports him without knowing it, and he 
finds it charming that she offers every thing to him, 
even her honor, and will receive nothing from him but 
his love. 

It is perfectly comprehensible how such a character, 
at the head of a nation, can completely demoralize it, 
since it cannot drop him with all the good-nature that 
he seems to have ; and yet, while despairing about its 
head, it at last loses confidence in the power of the 
limbs, and so falls into that discouraged and pitiable 
condition in which we find it at the commencement of 
the play, and out of which the spectacle of Joan's brave 



CHARLES VII. 201 

spirit quickly plucks it. Even Charles lias occasional 
traces of a knightly temper — where they are not espe- 
cially becoming ; in one of these he calls out the Duke of 
Burgundy, in the assured conviction that the challenge 
will not be accepted. It was only a romantic flight of 
his ; for, directly after, when the national danger was at 
the highest, he shows himself completely destitute of 
resources, breaks down utterly, and tries to comfort 
himself for his want of spirit with the words : 

" A dark and ominous doom 
Inipendetli o'er the Heaven-abandoned house 
Of Valois. There preside the avenging powers, 
To whom a mother's crimes unbarred the way." 

After the manner of such natures, he quickly and with 
skilful instinct transfers his own faults to the shoulders 
of others. 

Can we find reason to wonder that the forceful queen 
Isabeau — that proud, manlike woman — despises this 
" respectable," art-loving son ? She has too well experi- 
enced the perfidy which is the constant companion of 
such weak natures as are never able to hold firmly to 
any thing. How little Charles understands this, we see 
in the readiness with which he will surrender Orleans ; 
and when Dunois represents to him that they are all 
ready to espouse his cause, for — 

" It is the law of destiny that nations 

Should, for their mouarehs, immolate themselves. 
20 



202 CHARLES VII. 

We Frenchmen recognize this sacred law, 
Nor would annul it" — 

lie yet gives all up, and answers — 

" I can do no more " — 

and comforts himself like the dilettante he is, who 
always leaves in the lurch the call of duty when 
difficulties come : 

" Is, then, the sceptre such a peerless treasure ? 
Is it so hard to loose it from our grasp?" 

If, as a king, he always falls short, it cannot be 
denied that he possesses many of the virtues of a private 
man; he is good-humored, free-handed, full of fine 
fantasies; without being brilliant or deep, he has much 
tender feeling, as exhibited in the difficult scene of the 
Duke of Burgundy, and in the gentleness that would 
remove every thing that might wound the newly-won 
friend. Everywhere he shows himself easily propitiated ; 
he does not hold firmly to any thoughts of vengeance — 
for the reason, perhaps, that he does not hold firmly 
to any thing. All that remains constant to him, in 
all circumstances, is his giibness of speech. Crowned 
romanticists always know how to make very fine and 
intellectual observations, particularly about things that 
are past and gone. They are the true funeral preachers ; 
and King Charles shows himself a master of this craft, 
when he says of the dead Talbot : 



CHARLES VII. 203 

"Well, peace be with his ashes. Bear hitn hence. 
Here, in the heart of France, where his career 
Of conquest ended, let his relics lie. 
So far no hostile sword attained before. 
A fitting tomb shall memorize his name, 
His epitaph the spot whereon he fell." 

Nothing better, surely, could be said regarding the hero, 
after he had been so badly fought with ! 

But, if he knows how to do justice to the dead, his 
want of ability to do so with the living becomes the 
more conspicuous. We have an instance of this in the 
coronation scene, where he proposes to raise an altar to 
the maiden who has won for him his crown and realm, 
and put her by the side of St. Denis, and then, ten 
minutes later, at the accusation of a bigoted peasant, he 
lets her stand helpless, and even carries his favor so far 
that he, who owes her every thing, says through the lips 
of Du Chatel : 

" Joanna dArc, uninjured from the town 
The king permits you to depart. The gates 
Stand open to you ; fear no injury, 
You are protected by the royal word." 

Of course, our artistic king does not let the oppor- 
tunity slip of pronouncing a funeral discourse upon her, 
after she had died for him : 

" She's gone, she never will awaken more ; 
Her eye will gaze no more on earthly things. 
She soars on high, a spirit glorified ; 
She seeth not our grief — our penitence." 



204 CHARLES VII. 

This completes the picture of his weakness. His 
feeble nature cannot fail to be discerned in our drawing, 
based, as it is, upon existing portraits ; in the narrow 
face, the great, dreamy eyes, the long, thin nose, the 
sharp lips, and the little, thin hand, as well as in the 
slender, effeminate figure, it is only too plainly expressed. 
Seizing Charles's character, where most clearly developed 
in the play, the artist has represented him in the scene 
where, just before the appearance of the maid, he gives 
up his cause in despair, and sighs — 

" Blood hath been poured forth freely, arid in vain. 
The hand of Heaven is visibly against me." 



AGNES SOREL. 

[The Maid of Orleans.) 

The genius of woman lies in her heart, and when 
the demands of the heart are completely satisfied, we 
must study woman's affectional nature only in its own 
appropriate realm, and find some new surprise in its 
inexhaustible supply of features which move and touch 
us. 

Such a character — which has enjoyed the good 
fortune of remaining in perfect harmony with itself, 
notwithstanding that it has been adorned, not only with 
all personal charms, but also with those of uncommon 
intellectual power, as well as of superior education — we 
see in the renowned woman, whose pure and exalted - 
love, for ages beautified with all the charm of romance, 
has assumed a worthy place in all souls capable of 
feelino;, and to whom our Schiller also has erected a 
fair memorial in his work, investing that tenderness 
of hers, which has become proverbial, with all the 
magical charms of his poesy. In his production, we 
become acquainted with her as one of the most con- 



206 AGNES S OREL. 

spicuous priestesses of love, as that one of all his hero- 
ines who has lived most exclusively to love alone. 

The laws of the realm making it difficult for the king 
to give a priestly consecration to the alliance which his 
heart had formed with her, and compelling him, would 
he do this, to descend from his royal position, and deny 
legitimacy to his heirs, she is unwilling to accept this 
sacrifice, although it is offered to her, and although 
her illicit relation to him brings a blemish upon her, 
of which she shows herself to be perfectly conscious, 
when she says to him : 

" How ! Have I freely sacrificed to thee 
What is esteemed far more than gold or pearls, 
Aud shall I now hold back the gifts of fortune ? " 

She knows that she can only make the want of 
position good by unbounded fidelity and devotion, and 
therefore she makes the further sacrifice of her wealth, 
not only without hesitation, but she even refuses to 
appropriate every temporary advantage which she might 
draw from the king's passion for her. Yet he himself 
says of her : 

" She's nobly born as I — 
The royal blood of Valois not more pure ; 
The most exalted throne she would adorn, 
Yet she rejects it with disdain, and claims 
No other title than to be my love. 
No gift more costly will she e'er receive 
Than early flower in winter or rare fruit, 
No sacrifice on my part she permits, 



AGNES S OREL. 207 

Yet sacrificeth all she hath to me. 

With generous spirit she doth venture all — 

Her wealth and fortune — in my sinking bark." 

While she claims nothing for herself but the right 
to sacrifice every thing for him — that fairest and most 
charming right of all tender, womanly hearts— she yet 
neglects no means to call back to the weak man's 
remembrance his duty as king ; she spares no pains in 
keeping him secure in his exalted place. She appeals 
to him — 

" Thy courtiers metamorphose into soldiers, 
Thy gold transmute to iron. All thou hast, 
With resolute daring, venture for thy crown " — 

and still displays the noblest spirit when misfortune has 
mounted to the highest point, and when he, in his 
pusillanimity, is ready to renounce all ; she buoys him 
up, with a hero's spirit, when he gives way : 

"God forbid 
That we, in weak despair, should quit this realm ! 
This utterance came not from thy heart, my king— 
Thy noble heart, which hath been sorely riven 
By the fell deed of thy unnatural mother. 
Thou'lt be thyself again. Eight valiantly 
Thou'lt battle with thine adverse destiny, 
Which doth oppose thee with relentless ire." 

She reveals to us a great, noble soul, which only her 
own wealth of love deceives respecting the weakness of 
her lover, to whom her fancy lends all the advantages, 
the want of which makes him play so sorry a part. She 



208 AGNES SOREL, 

feels rightly, as only love can feel, that if a miracle alone 
can carry him through the tempest of fierce battle, he 
has such a good-will to his people, and such a noble dis- 
position, that he will be able to bless his land when once 
it is in peace : 

" Heaven, in thy gentle spirit, hath prepared 
The leech to remedy the thousand ills 
By party rage inflicted on the land. 
The flames of civil discord thou wilt quench, 
And my heart tells roe thou'lt establish peace, 
And found anew the monarchy of France." 

The humbleness and modesty which the fair lady 
shows on every occasion, the bashful manner with 
which she offers her jewels — in which act the artist 
represents her to us — as well as the veneration with 
which she throws herself in the dust before Joau — 
in all these she appears as the gentle, affectionate, de- 
voted creature to whom love is all. On this account, 
too, she cannot comprehend the Maid of Orleans ; she 
cannot understand a mission which shall, after the goal 
of battle is reached, close the heart to those gentle 
emotions which she experiences, and therefore says 
to her — 

" Oh ! couldst thou own a woman's feeling heart ! 
Put off this armor, war is over now ; 
Confess thy union with the softer sex. 
My loving heart shrinks timidly from thee, 
While thus thou wearest Pallas' brow severe" — 

where she would gladly see Joan share the rapture 



AGNES SOKE L. 209 

which she feels, and which she expresses so naive and 
humanly : 

" For — all my weakness shall I own to tliec ? 
Not the renown of France, my fatherland, 
Not the new splendor of the monarch's crown, 
Not the triumphant gladness of the crowds, 
Engage this woman's heart. One only form 
Is in its depths enshrined. It hath not room 
For any feeling save for one alone. 
He is the idol — him the people Mess, 
Him they extol, for him they strew these flowers ; 
And he is mine — he is my own true love." 

The fate of the historical Sorel was what would be 
expected from linking her destiny to a character so 
weak as Charles : weary of the court, or herself grown 
superfluous there, she withdrew to her palace Beaute, 
from which she received the name " Dame de Beaute." 
At the repeated invitation of the king and queen, how- 
ever, she visited the palace once more, where, in 1450, 
she suddenly died, as was suspected, from poison. 

The picture which we give of her is based upon an 
authentic portrait coming down from her time, which 
suffers us to suspect the gentle and devoted character of 
the fair lady, to whose soft heart love could lend every 
thing, and which it was even able to steel with courage 
and decision. 

21 




ZILy'a^t^j^' 



TALBOT. 

{The Maid of Orleans.) 

If in tlie Maid we have the power of faith per- 
sonified, and see it victorious over every thing — all 
-material forces, all the appliances of the understanding, 
the art of war as well as state-craft, if these all are able 
to effect nothing when brought into collision with faith's 
immeasurable power, we need, as a representative of 
these resistant forces, one who shall bring out their 
entire possibility into the clearest light, and make their 
triumph all the more brilliant. 

This contrast to the Maid is presented in Talbot, 
who possesses every thing in profusion which is lacking 
to the inexperienced Joan : the richest experience, the 
confident self - consciousness of a victorious general, a 
truly colossal mind, an invincible, all-defying courage, 
imfailing presence of mind, and all these qualities inter- 
penetrated by the keenest understanding, in which he 
stands far before all the other characters of the great 
scene. But this very pitiless logic of thought, in the 
unbending hero-nature that is so imposing, is powerless 



212 TALBOT. 

against the enthusiasm of faith ; for, while this binds 
together what is most widely sundered, and melts, with 
its glow, the stiff ice-covering of brittle natures, that 
cutting sharpness often separates and isolates, instead 
of binding together. 

This portentous working of his spirit we learn at 
the very first appearance of the general. With entire 
correctness he declares the panic of the soldiers to be 
folly ; but he pains the allies at the same time, by 
giving prominence to his most marked characteristics 
— his genuine English pride, hardness, and relentlessness. 
In reading the contest-scene with the Duke of Burgundy,- 
our thoughts are transferred, involuntarily, to much later 
times. Controlled, as he was, by understanding alone, 
Talbot must always give weight to those reasons and 
convictions which, with the mass of men, have so little 
weight ; and, therefore, repugnant as Queen Isabeau* 
is to his nature, he yet bows before her mind, and 
gives her, despite his pride, the hand of reconciliation. 
Notwithstanding, while he yields to her reasoning, he 
cannot deny himself the satisfaction of repaying this 
humiliation by giving Queen Isabeau a few malicious 
side-thrusts : 

" Go, in God's came ! When you Lave left the camp, 
No devil will again appall our troops." 

How the sword-like sharpness of his nature appears in 
every word ! 

There follow the two battles, whose description is 



TALBOT. 213 

among the finest which Schiller's muse has given to us, 
and in which we see the hero submit to the most 
searching trial. It is a perfectly correct touch, that 
he alone remains unconfused in the universal panic, yet 
his nature being, as it is, simply under the control of 
understanding, does not enable him to comprehend the 
tmnultuous fear that prevails ; he does not understand 
the wondrous power that confronts him ; to him the 
Maid is merely — 

" The juggling minx who plays the well-learned part 
Of heroine." 

We pardon him for this one-sidedness merely out 
of regard to the heroic defiance with which, amid the 
universal panic, he swears : 

" This sword shall pierce 
Who talks to me of fear or coward flight ! " 

This interest in the proud hero is yet heightened 
when we fall in with him the third time ; conquered and 
mortally wounded, we hear him, in his pain and despair, 
curse, like the bound Prometheus, that fate which he 
regards as unjust ; and, with dreadful energy, he breaks 
out into the celebrated words : 

" Foil}', thou conquerest, and I must yield. 
Against stupidity the very gods 
Themselves contend in vain. Exalted Reason, 
Resplendent daughter of the Head divine, 
Wise foundress of the system of the world, 



214 TALBOT. 

Guide of the stars, who art thou then, if thou, 
Bound to the tail of Folly's uncurbed steed, 
Must, vainly shrieking, with the drunken crowd, 
Eyes open, plunge down headlong in the abyss?" 

This blasphemy works all the more powerfully and 
fearfully upon us, since the nature of the man, who gives 
vent to it, has become so clear, that we see that this 
feeling has sprung necessarily out of his very soul. 

The whole lofty, proud grief of this vanquished spirit 
lies in his wrath as he continues : 

" Accursed who striveth after noble ends, 
And with deliberate wisdom forms his plans ! 
To the fool-king belongs the world." 

Nor can we refuse to justify his point of view when 
he says : 

" But to be baffled by such juggling arts ! 
Deserved our earnest and laborious life 
Not a more earnest issue ? " — 

on the contrary, we admire the genuineness, heroism, 
brevity, and nervousness of this dying speech, that grand 
contempt of all pathos, that proud modesty with which 
he calls his fame - crowned life merely " earnest and 
laborious." It is, therefore, a really tragic event that 
the limitations of his nature and his want of fantasy 
allow him no bridge to the world beyond — a world 
which not the intellect grasps, but the soul perceives ; 
so that he, who fills the world with his warlike name, 
carries from the strife of life no other booty than — ■ 



TALBOT. 215 

" an insight into nothingness, 
And utter scorn of all which once appeared 
To us exalted and desirable." 

In this cold view something colossal appears to us 
to exist. Notwithstanding that we are convinced of his 
grievous error, and see perfectly clearly that he must 
rightly succumb, because, in the pride of his own power, 
he despises the heart of man — the inexhaustible source 
of feeling ; and, in his blindness, does not perceive that 
that which he has lightly undertaken is an attack upon 
the existence of a noble race, before whose wounded 
pride all individual superiority must succumb — despite 
all this, we admire the hero stiU. 

There is something Napoleonic in this nature, in this 
energetic realism which fails to recognize ideal forces, 
even then, when, vanquished by them, he is cast down to 
the earth. 




^//^•^ c 



QUEEN ISABEAU. 

(The Maid of Orleans.) 

There is no figure in the drama so well adapted to 
bring home to us the disturbed condition of affairs in all 
France at that time, to show us how completely all 
natural bonds were severed during the civil war, as that 
of the queen, who goes so far beyond the limits pre- 
scribed by her sex, and who forms in her whole aspect 
so fearful a contrast to the Maid. She is thoroughly 
adapted to prepare us for the extraordinary apparition 
which we are subsequently to encounter in Joan. If the 
latter renounces her womanly nature out of devotion to 
a loftier idea, Isabeau, impelled by a wild passion, acts 
in equal disregard and defiance of her position as wife 
and mother. 

To account for a psychological process so abnormal, 
needs little more than to cite the points in her character, 
given slightly aud sketchily in the play, yet with masterly 
correctness. At the outset we see nothing but the fear 
and dismay which this woman's unnatural warfare with 
her own son excites in the mass of men ; and with these 

28 



218 QUEEN ISABEAU. 

we discern the opposition which is encountered even 
from the more highly -trained generals, who frankly say : 

" Go ! go ! The thought of combatting for you 
Unnerves the courage of the bravest men." 

Yet even they yield to the force of the reasons which 
this clever woman urges, and unite, after a most bitter 
feud had parted them ! In the brief, masterly scene, 
which is allowed her for her justification, she quickly 
displays all the qualities which the artist needs to use in 
drawing her portrait ; and it is here, therefore, that she 
is represented. She shows us there the richly-endowed, 
proud, mighty nature, with its penetrating understanding, 
and strong, eager sensuousness ; with her, feeling has but 
a subordinate part to play. Had this spirited, heroic, 
commanding princess had a husband who was her equal, 
sound in mind and in body — in one word, a true man — 
she would assuredly never have gone beyond the circle 
which her sex and the habits of her age prescribed. 
But, in her very youth, she is compelled to enter into 
the most unnatural relations — thrust into a foreign land, 
compelled to marry a man at whose side she experiences, 
not rapture, but compassion or fear. And now the fierce, 
uncontrolled elements in her character break forth • she 
herself says : 

" I've passions and warm blood, and, as a queen, 
Come to this realm to live, and not to seem. 
Should I have lingered out a joyless life 
Because the curse of adverse destiny 



QUEEN ISABEAU. 219 

To a mad consort joined rpy blooming youth ? 
More than my life I prize my liberty ; 
And who assails me here " — 

Her inborn trustfulness — 

" Hypocrisy I scorn. Such as I am, 
So let the world behold me " — 

now becomes arrogance, just as the nature of woman, 
inclined as it is to follow, to cling, to obey, is brought to 
do the very reverse, when deprived of the conditions 
necessary to its free development. It is so here, where 
a young, fair, richly-gifted princess is deprived of one 
who ought to be her lord, and sees herself surrounded 
only by subjects and flatterers. If this necessary envi- 
ronment of princes fills her fiery, penetrating spirit with 
depreciation of other men, the character of her own son 
must do so still more. At the outset she despises in him 
the weakling, the characterless, fluctuating mind, which 
can hold firmly to nothing, which can neither love nor 
hate heartily, and which is therefore always untrue. 
This feeling we gather from her expressions when she 
takes the Maid captive, and learns of her that she has 
been banished by the dauphin : 

" Banished — because you save him from the abyss ; 
Banished! therein I recognize my son!" 

This well-deserved contempt is gradually transformed 
into intense hate, when this weakling, who is so infinitely 
surpassed by his mother in understanding, courage, and 



220 QUEEN ISABEAU. 

vigor, undertakes to be her lord and master — to judge 
her morals, and to banish her. Then, for the first time, 
wounded in her inmost soul, with her passionate, choleric 
temperament, shrinking back from nothing, she curses 
him : 

" Your feeble nature cannot comprehend 
The vengeance of an outraged mother's heart. 
Who pleases me, I love ; who wrongs, I hate. 
If he who wrongs me chance to be my son, 
All the more worthy is he of my hate. 
The life I gave, I will again take back 
From him who doth, with ruthless violence, 
The bosom rend which bore and nourished him. 
Ye who do thus make war upon the dauphin, 
What rightful cause have ye to plunder him ? 
What crime hath he committed against you ? 
What insult are you called on to avenge 2 
Ambition, paltry envy, goad you on ; 
I have a right to hate him — he's my son." 

After preserving her courage to the latest moment, 
not giving up, even when all around her have fled, 
steadfast in her hate, as, under other circumstances, she 
would have been in her love, she has nothing more to 
hope for than not to meet, when vanquished, the object 
of her aversion — 

" Every place 
The same where I encounter not the dauphin " — 

and passes from view, filling us, if not with respect, at 
least with a timid awe of her greatness, and the Titanic 
wildness and vigor of her nature, and mingling these 
with amazement and admiration. 



QUEEN ISABEAU. 221 

There are several portraits of this notable woman in 
existence, one of which, to be seen in the gallery of 
Versailles, has been used by the artist as the foundation 
of his drawing. Although it represents her soon after 
her marriage, it yet enables us to detect the energy and 
strong sensuousness which were so marked elements in 
her character. 




^-.V 'S//?i7 



DONNA ISABELLA. 

(The Bride of Messina.) 

All art must bear a national stamp ; its works must 
correspond to the habits, manners, and character of the 
people from which they spring — must reflect it in its 
individuality, although ennobled in form and substance, 
if its full effect is to be attained, and the public welfare 
be benefited. Beginning with this principle, we may 
easily understand why " The Bride of Messina," in spite 
of the wondrous fineness of its diction, and the extreme 
dignity and loftiness of its thought, is the one of all 
Schiller's pieces which has had the least influence, and 
least completely domesticated itself in Germany. It is 
the foreign aspect of the form as well as of the ideas 
which causes this play to appear as a more or less exotic 
plant. If, at this time, we wonder at the path which 
Schiller struck out in " The Bride of Messina," we on slit 
not to forget that he and Goethe, at their appearance, 
found in their nation no high culture, no firmly-settled 
taste, and no repertoire worth the name, if we except a 



224 DONNA ISABELLA. 

few pieces of Lessing. They were, consequently, given 
to experiments, and, as is well known, gradually passed 
from the imitation of Shakespeare to the Greek tragedy 
— a course which every scholar takes once, and then 
returns to the modern form. 

The greatest and the most venturesome of the novel- 
ties which Schiller attempts, in " The Bride of Messina," 
is the introduction of the moralizing chorus, as a kind 
of personified public opinion. Still it is not perfectly 
intelligible to us, although Schiller, by dividing it into 
two parts, and giving several leaders to them, makes 
important concessions to modern taste. Schiller, accord- 
ing to his own confession, wanted to transfer the plot of 
his piece to an ideal time, and give it the simplest form 
of life, in order that it should be purely human ; in this 
way he believed that he should lift tragedy into a higher 
sphere, giving it that Greek form which appeared to 
him the purest and most ideal. But Greek art is the 
most national of all, and its forms are therefore never 
perfectly intelligible in a time so different and in a 
world so different as our own. He was compelled, 
at the outset, to make concessions to modern feeling, 
as already said, with respect to the choir, and also 
to give his characters certain special features which 
do not belong to all time, but to a certain definite 
period. 

The poet had, unquestionably, in mind the Norman 
conquerors of Sicily, when he painted the royal family, 



DONNA ISABELLA. 225 

whose turbulent passions bring them to so tragic an end. 
The finger-marks of this are so abundant in the play, 
that there can be scarcely a doubt of it. Isabella, for 
example, says to her sons, directly after the first meeting 
of their retinues : 

" What could have been their real interest with you — 
The foreigners, the race that violently claims the soil, 
Driving the ancient lords from their own heritage, 
And claiming precedence before them?" 

The artist has, accordingly, adopted the costume of 
the eleventh century — the flourishing epoch of that 
Eoman- Byzantine style, which, in Sicily, assumed so 
peculiar a form by the intermingling of marked Sara- 
cenic elements, left behind them by the former lords of 
the land. Schiller, everywhere, lays special emphasis 
upon these Moorish constituents of Messina, and still 
more the remains of old heathen ideas ; we hear of 
the gods as much as we do of the Church, and 
the Mohammedan belief in destiny as well as the Pagan 
trust in oracles are intermingled with Christian tradi- 
tions. 

Upon this background now appears the imposing 
figure of Donna Isabella, consecrating her deep grief 
over her departed, heroic husband. The dark veil of 
a heavy sorrow only makes more conspicuous in her 
noble figure the loftiness of soul which she everywhere 
displays, that grandeur and acuteness of spirit which the 
chorus paints with the words : 

29 



226 DONNA ISABELLA. 

" Yes, tliere is something great, I must respect it, 
In a potentate's princely thought, 
And upon human action and dealings 
Looks she with peaceful calmness down." 

This nobleness is the first thing that strikes us, but 
not less clearly is the instinct for rule displayed ; the 
preservation of her realm for her race she never loses 
from sight a moment. Schiller is our only poet who 
everywhere impresses upon his characters greatness and 
dignity, and the seal of power. This most difficult of all 
art-problems he lias the skill to solve everywhere, and, in 
Donna Isabella, we find a recurrence of those qualities 
which win our astonishment in Wallenstein, Elizabeth 
of England, Mary Stuart, Philip II., and others. The 
manner in which the pain-stricken mother makes her 
sons conscious of their equal deserts, the manner with 
which she portrays to them the dreadful picture of the 
necessary results of their feud, shows us not only her 
greatness, but also that tremendous passionateness to 
which, one after another, all the members of her house 
fall as victims. She has her share in misfortune, as 
that excess of pride teaches us she must have, where, 
informed about her sons' love, she cries : 

" Oh, happiest mother ! Chief of women ! 
In bliss supreme ! can aught of earthly joy 
O'erbalance thice ? " 

With wonderful poetic power and sustained strength 



DONNA ISABELLA. 227 

the chorus warns against such exaggerated feeling by 
the uncovered corpse of Don Manuel : 

•' When clouds athwart the lowering sky 

Are driven — when bursts of hollow moan 

The thunder's peal — our trembling bosoms own 
The might of awful Destiny ! 
Yet oft the lightning's glare 
Darts sudden through the cloudless air ; — 

Then in thy short, delusive day 
Of bliss, oh ! dread the treacherous snare ; 
Nor prize the fleeting goods and vain, 

The flowers that bloom but to decay ! 
Nor wealth, nor joy, nor aught but pain, 
Was e'er to mortal's lot secure ; 
Our first, best lesson — to endure ! " 

In vain ! for by this corpse she at once, in the outbreak 
of her boundless passion, curses his murderer's whole 
race, and even turns her angry cries against Heaven — 

" And is it thus 
Ye keep your word, ye gods ? Is this your truth ? 
Alas ! for him that trusts with honest heart 
Your soothing wiles. . . . 

Why do we lift 
Our suppliant hands, and at the sacred shrines 
Kneel to adore ? Good, easy dupes, what win we 
From faith and pious awe? . . . 
The book of Nature is a maze, a dream 
The sage's art, and every sign a falsehood ! " — 

and, at the very height of her despair, she still 
gives utterance to the proud, unbending spirit — the 



228 DONNA ISABELLA. 

fundamental cause of the overthrow of the whole 
royal house : 

" The gods have done their worst. If they be true 
Or false, 'tis one, for nothing they can add 
To this; the measure of their rage is full. 
Why should I tremble, that have naught to fear ? " 




<^^?z. 



•■6Z&6£< 



DON MANUEL. 

( The Bride of Messina.) 

By quoting a few sentences from Schiller's remark- 
able introduction to " The Bride of Messina/' we shall 
give the reader the best view of the poet's concep- 
tion of what is the true foundation of all works 
of art : 

"Art has for its object not merely a transient pleasure to excite to a momen- 
tary dream of liberty. Its aim is to make us absolutely free ; and this it accom- 
plishes by -awakening, exercising, and perfecting in us a power to remove to an 
objective distance trie sensible world, to transform it into the free working of 
our spirit, and thus acquire a domiuion over the material by means of ideas. 
For the very reason, also, that true art requires something of the objective and 
real, it is not satisfied with the show of truth. It rears its ideal edifice ou truth 
itself — on the solid and deep foundations of nature." 

While the poet makes this demand — that the artist 
thoroughly idealize nature, " transform it into the free 
working of his spirit " — in other words, omit all that 
does not belong to the idea of his work, but supply all 
that is wanting to make it complete — it is presupposed 
that, as in the whole, so in each particular character, he 



230 DON MANUEL. 

begins with a certain definite conception of nature, and 
merely beautifies, and ennobles it through the medium 
of a poetic spirit. In " The Bride of Messina/' how- 
ever, he takes a long step beyond this theory, as well 
as beyond his wont in other plays. This he indicates in 
the next sentence : 

" But how art can be at once altogether ideal, yet, in the strictest sense, 
real ; how it can entirely leave the actual, and yet harmonize with nature, is a 
problem to the multitude." 

In order to solve this problem, he substitutes here 
for that view of nature — which is exalted into an ideal 
— an ideal to which merely the forms and the organ- 
isms of nature are lent — that is to say, he strikes out 
an entirely new and untried path ; for all his other 
figures, from Fiesco and Wallenstein to Gustel, are based 
upon definite originals, while the dramatis persona? of 
" The Bride of Messina " are clearly not. This is most 
apparent in Beatrice and Don Manuel ; and it is a 
severe task for art to give the latter any individuality 
of form. 

The artist has represented both the brothers as 
they stand in the presence of their mother — mute and 
defiant, with their wild retinues behind them. Both 
are invested with the fire of youth, conjoined with 
princely dignity : 

" Donna. Isabella [to Don Ccesar\. In all the company 
that hems thee in, 
Where is a nobler countenance than thy brother's ? 



DON MANUEL. 231 

" [To Don Manuel.] Who, among these thou call'st 
thy friends, 
Can to thy brother a moment be compared ? 
When you but think of his few years, 
His equal will. in vain be sought." 

Don Manuel's mode of thought confirms the mother's 
portraiture of the two brothers : 

" Don Ccesar [without looking at Don Manuel]. 
Thou art my elder, speak. Without dishonor 
I yield to thee. 

" Don Manuel. One gracious word, and instant 
My tongue is rival in the strife of love. 

" Don Ccesar. I am the guiltier, weaker. 

" Don Manuel. Oh ! had I known thy spirit 
thus to peace 
Inclined, what thousand griefs had never torn 
A mother's heart ! 

" Don Ccesar. Thou art too proud to meanness, 
I to falsehood. 

'■'•Don Manuel. Say not so. 

Who doubts thy noble heart, knows thee not well. 
Thy words were prouder, if thy soul were mean. 

" Don Cmsar. We are one forever." 

Love has made reconciliation easy for him • it has 
extinguished the flame of hate. He is not only the 
older but the more steadfast of the two brothers, as 
we see in his words — 

" Winged is happiness, and hard to bind ; 
Close locked, and set away, must it be guarded. 



232 DON MANUEL. 

Silence must be its constant sentinel, 

And quick it flies when tongues do prattle, 

And baste to lift the lid that hides it" — 

yet he is not insured against the sudden attack of that 
overmastering passion to which his whole race is subject. 
We see this in the history of his love, where he has 
sudden recourse to force, and abducts the object of his 
passion before lie knows whether it is absolutely neces- 
sary. He is always great, open-handed, pomp-loving ; he 
even shows his fine taste in the selection of his bride's 
toilet ! " Fair as a god, and manly as a hero," is the 
expression applied to him by her he loves ; we see in him 
a proud and princely soul, and give him the whole 
measure of our admiration when misfortune has led 
him into that quarrel so long and protracted, that the 
traces left in his brother's soul are too deep to shut 
out envy and rage, when the least occasion for them 
appears — 

" The deeds accomplished are too marked 
To ever be forgiven or forgot" — 

are the words of the chorus in view of the approach 
of Fate. They are of a piece with all that grandeur of 
diction w r hich imparts so great a charm to the whole 
play, that even, aside from the treatment of the sub- 
ject, the language itself has a powerful effect upon us. 
Everywhere we feel ourselves more exalted and blinded 
by the greatness of the poet's thoughts than by the fatal 



DON MANUEL. 233 

spectacle which he places before our eyes. We feel 
free, because we see ourselves lifted so high above all 
that is low aud mean. We do not understand the 
workings of destiny, but we believe all the more 
strongly in Schiller. 

30 



DON CJ1SAR. 

(The Bride of Messina.) 

The object of every work of art is to elevate us, 
and to give us a sense of freedom ; that of tragedy in 
particular, to move us even to the foundations of our 
beiug. If " The Bride of Messina " attains, unquestion- 
ably, the first of these ends, we must, in candor, con- 
fess that it falls further short of the second than does 
any other of Schiller's plays. That this is the case 
must be chiefly ascribed to that false theory of his, 
adverted to on a foregoing page, according to which 
the poet detaches himself as much as possible from all 
local relations, and invests his characters with as few 
qualities as he can that connect them with us ; he 
places them, so far as art allows him to do so, in an 
ideal world. If the fate of Mary Stuart, of Thekla, or 
of Louisa Miller, takes stronger hold of us, and they 
become dearer to us, it is from the number of individual 
traits which the poet has ascribed to them, and which 
he has denied to Isabella and to Beatrice ; we know the 
epoch, the manners, all the environments of the former 



236 DON CiESAE. 

far better than we do those of the characters depicted 
in " The Bride of Messina/' 

We by no means give our lore to what is perfect 
after its kind — in other words, the ideal — but to the 
incomplete, the imperfect, the individual. What is per- 
fect puts us at a distance, only the individual is near us, 
and therefore allied to us, and intelligible. 

We may carry this even further. As we take an 
interest only in what we understand, and cannot com- 
prehend even the finest verses in a foreign tongue, so we 
love only that which has fife. No one ever fell in love 
with the picture of a lady, notwithstanding the assertions 
of all the novel-writers. But it is only what has indi- 
viduality that has life as well, and the secret suspicion 
that purely ideal figures have no capacity of life, never 
permits us to feel that interest in them which we have 
in those which have individuality. If the figures of 
Raphael, for example, excite our warmest interest, while 
those of the (perhaps) greater Michael Angelo seem far 
removed from us, and only fill us with a timid awe, there 
is no other reason for this than that the former wrought 
upon a basis of actual observation, while the latter em- 
bodied the mere creations of his own imagination. 

We take an interest in Don Csesar, so far as he dis- 
plays to us individual characteristics ; and, at all events, 
he is to us a more living personage than Don Manuel,- 
because he possesses so much more individuality. • The 
younger, he is, at the same time, the more ardent and 



DON CiBSAR. 237 

choleric of the two brothers — perhaps the nobler and 
more magnanimous. He it is, at least, who takes the 
first step toward a reconciliation ; the more proud and 
fiery, he is, at the same time, the one more easily won, 
as he shows by his words — 

" Dost thou not think more meanly of the brother ? " — ■ 

and — 

" Had I before known thee to be so just, 
Much now accomplished had been left undone." 

Although passionate, like his whole race, he yet 
hates intrigue with all the straightforwardness and 

CD O 

strength of a knightly soul ; he punishes the traitor 
who wants to assassinate Don Manuel for money. His 
first thought, after gaining over his brother, is to give 
him the whole love of his heart ; and even more 
vehement than his hate had been is the affection for 
the newly-won friend — 

" More than I can tell 
Thy countenance delights me — firmly, I believe, 
We yet shall be the closest bound of friends " — 

and he wishes to impart to his brother immediately the 
new hope which has sprung up within his heart. The 
brother, however, is little inclined to accept the con- 
fession : 

" Tell me thy heart ! Keep to thyself thy secret." 

Only into such a glowing nature as this, open to every 
impression, can love enter like a flash of lightning, and 
a single instant be decisive in its influence upon an entire 



238 DON CJSAE. 

life ; and his previous want of acquaintance with love 
must make him doubly susceptible. Don Caesar says 
very ungallantly, when his mother bids him tell the 
story of his love : 

" Thou know'st 
That, heedless ever of the giddy race, 
I looked on beauty's charms with cold disdain. 
Nor deemed of womankind there lived another 
Like thee — whom my idolatrous fancy decked 
With heavenly graces. . . . 

Yet then the beams 
Of mighty love — so willed my guiding star — 
First lit my soul — but how it chanced, myself 
I ask in vain. . . . 

In my heart, 

Though strange, yet with familiarities inwrought 
She seemed, and instant spoke the thought — 'tis she, 
Or none that lives ! " 

The deep tenderness for his mother — a very fine 
feature in both the brothers, finely invented by the 
poet as an offset to their mutual hate — is particularly 
beautiful in Don Caesar ; and scarcely less attractive is 
the zeal with which, despite his passion for Beatrice, he 
goes to seek his sister, before he brings his bride to his 
mother, and thinks only afterward of the need in which 
his affianced is placed. 

That he believes in Beatrice and her love, even 
without hearing a word from her in confession of it, and 
even ascribes her disquiet and alarm to the favor which 
he thinks he enjoys with her, shows us afresh the stormy 
excitement going on within him, and, as may readily be 



DON CiESAK. 239 

conjectured iu such characters, when he finds the one he 
loves in his brother's arms, all the old anger rises in him 
afresh, and, in the belief that he has been betrayed, 
drives him to the fatal deed. 

All the more effectively does the thunderbolt of truth 
strike him — the man who, in whatever he does, means to 
do right — and he flies wildly to the bosom that bore him ; 
even the old demon of jealousy regains its dominion over 
him, in spite of what has occurred, after he sees that his 
mother and sister have loved his brother better than 
himself. It is not his crime that forms his deepest grief, 
but his brother's possession of the heart of her he loves : 

" Weep ! I will blend my tears with thine — nay, more, 
I will avenge thy brother ; but the lover — 
Weep not for him — thy passionate yearning tears 
My inmost heart. . . . 
I loved thee, as I ne'er had loved before, 
When thou wert strange ; and that I bear the curse 
Of brother's blood, 'tis but because I loved thee 
With measureless transport ; love . was all my guilt." 

It is the characteristic of great natures that they 
are not cast down and broken by adverse fates, but 
pierced and exalted by them ; and Don Caesar does not 
doubt for a moment that he is guilty of an offence, and 
that he must make an offering of himself to outraged 
justice, in order to do away with the curse which rests 
upon his house. This heroic character gives him the 
energy not only to resist his mother's entreaties — 



240 DON CiESAE. 

" Yes ! in death are quenched 
The fires of rage, and Hatred owns, subdued, 
The mighty reconciler. Then to the tomb 
Stay not my passage ; oh ! forbid me not 
Thus with atoning sacrifice to quell 
The curse of Heaven. We pluck 
The arrow from the wound — but the torn heart 
Shall ne'er be healed. Let him who can, drag on 
A weary life of penance and of pain, 
To cleanse the spot of everlasting guilt ; 
I would not live the victim of despair " — 

but even, at last, to overcome steadfastly the petitions 
of his clearly-loved sister, the bright flame of love only 
gives him the power needed for the execution of what 
he purposes : 

" I will not rob thee, brother ! 
The sacrifice is thine : — Hark ! for the tomb, 
Mightier than mother's tears or sister's love, 
Thy voice resistless cries ; my arms enfold 
A treasure, potent with celestial joys, 
To deck this earthly sphere, and make a lot 
Worthy the gods ! but I shall live in bliss, 
While in the tomb thy sainted innocence 
Sleeps unavenged ! " 




A- ScheiZeka 



■ 



BEATRICE. 

( The Bride of Messina.) 

That Schiller's poetic instinct always was a truer 
guide to him than his theoretical reasoning, has already 
been remarked in our comments on his portrait. " The 
Bride of Messina " is perhaps the strongest proof of this, 
as in this play the poet believed that he had reached 
the highest point ever attained by him. Clinging as 
closely as possible to the Greek form, he endeavored to 
embody the Hellenic view of Fate — that which consigns 
man to destruction without his own fault — a view which 
is opposed to all our ideas of poetic and divine justice. 
The result was, that he pleased the public best when he 
followed his own genius most and his theory least ; 
whereas, with artists, it was just the reverse, and his 
influence with them was unfortunate. It was Schiller's 
brilliant example which led such men as Milliner, Wer- 
ner, and others to write their " Dramas of Fate." Of 
this fatalistic theory of predestination, which is exhibited 
in " The Bride of Messina," there has been a dreadful 
misuse made, and confusion has entered "into all our 

31 



242 BEATRICE. 

modern conceptions which have their foundation merely 
in the free self-determination of man — a foundation 
which appeared to be discernible on a superficial glance 
at the unfolding of destiny in the princely family of 
Messina. Fatalism is indeed the chief element of the 
Greek tragedy ; but, in Schiller's play, it has been by no 
means retained in all its rigid logic ; as the destiny of 
men is, in the main, the result of the collision of freedom 
and necessity, so that of the hostile brothers, as well 
as of their unhappy mother, springs largely from their 
immoderation, and the boundless passionateuess of their 
characters ; external occasions merely give the stroke 
that sets free what has been working within, and what 
would sooner or later force its way. Fate does nothing 
more, primarily, than what the chorus hints at in its 
words : 

" Yes, it has not well begun, 
Trust rne, and it ends not well; 
No crooked paths to Virtue lead ; 
111 fruit has ever sprung from evil seed ! 

The source of that misconception which has entirely 
led Schiller's imitators astray is to be found, primarily, 
in the character of Beatrice, whose happiness is wrecked 
in the most fearful manner, in conformity to the biblical 
saying, that the sins of the fathers are visited upon the 
children unto the tenth generation. This sin consists 
not only in the abduction of Isabella — the curse-laden 
source of all subsequent misfortune — but also in the heart- 
lessness with which the father sacrifices his own child to 



BEATRICE. 



243 



a dark superstition. Almost as great is the hardness of 
her who began by deceiving her husband, and who, for 
a long succession of years, has nothing to do with her 
child, and even forgets her in three months after the 
husband's death. Although this is the harbinger of 
Fate, the poet has taken good care to show, in Beatrice, 
despite the slightness of her individuality, the true 
daughter of her mother, in making her guilty of a 
double disobedience — in allowing herself to be taken 
from the convent, and thus prevented by the blindness 
of her passion from recognizing her mother ; and in con- 
travening the command of her mother and her lover that 
she should not be present at her father's funeral. The 
tragic element of the piece lies in the immoderate 
severity of her punishment, the loss of her lover, brought 
about by the inevitable workings of circumstances. 

This tragical impression is heightened by the lofty 
spirit which Schiller has given to Beatrice. Though he 
has given her but a single scene in which to express her 
inner nature, yet his delicate pencil-strokes enable us to 
catch her character in some measure. The artist has 
taken her in those scenes where, awaiting her lover, she 
speaks out her consciousness of wrong-doing — 

" Forgot my childhood's ties, 
I listened to the lover's flattering tale — 
Listened and trusted ! From the sacred dome 
Allured — betrayed — for sure some hell-born magic 
Enchained my frenzied sense — I fled with him, 
The invader of Religion's dread abodes ! " — 



I 



244 BEATRICE. 

and, in the most touching manner, she assigns the 
cause — 

" And should I not surrender to the man 
Who, of all men, clung close to me alone? 
For all exposed was I to life's grave perils, 
And e'en a child, had fortune torn me 
(I dare not lift the dart, mysterious veil) 
From the embrace and bosom of my mother." 

She then excuses herself, in thought, to her mother : 

" Forgive, thou lordly one, who bore me, 
That I, seizing with undue haste the tragic hours, 
Have brought my fate upon me with my own hands. 
Not freely have I chosen it ; it has found me out." 

The whole glow of Southern passion breaks out in 
her when she says — 

" I know them not, and I shall never know them, 
Who call themselves the authors of my being, 
If they shall separate me from thee, my love. 
An everlasting riddle to myself I'll live ; 
I know enough : I live for thee ! " — 

and, for this new offence, her destiny makes her its 
victim immediately after Don Csesar's appearance. 

The hot blood of the race is seen also at the corpse 
of Don Manuel, where Beatrice, awaking from her swoon, 
accuses her mother for preserving her : 

" Oh, mother, mother ! wherefore hast thou 
Saved me? Why did not you load me 
With the curse which followed me ere I breathed?" 






BEATRICE. 245 

For my destruction, thine — yes, for us all 
Hast thou withheld from the gods of the dead 
The prey they demand ! " 

Here we see that same singular mixture of Christian 
and heathen ideas, which runs through the whole piece, 
and often perplexes our whole moral feeling, despite the 
wonderful splendor of the diction. This often has an 
almost intoxicating effect upon the reader, and causes 
us to cease to wonder that Schiller should think this the 
greatest of his works. This mastership of art, indispen- 
sable as it is to a classic work, and prominent as it is in 
this play, is not sufficient to put such a work as this in 
the highest rank ; and, with respect to " The Bride of 
Messina," we must confess that, in other pieces, Schiller 
has come closer to the heart of the nation, and worked 
with more effective power, or German culture and 
German thought, despite the wondrous beauty of form 
which he has given to the play now under consider- 
ation. 



WILLIAM TELL. 

(William Tell.) 

The right of a free man, as well as of a whole 
people, not only to resist tyrannical oppression, but to 
battle even to the last, has never, perhaps, found so 
brilliant a defence as in Tell. Few as are the traces of 
the times in which he lived, upon the other works of 
Schiller, here they are unmistakable. Could the pressure 
of foreign dominion, which rested then so heavily upon 
Germany, have been without influence upon the thoughts 
developed in Tell ? If, in Wallenstein, the hero and his 
command of men are unmistakably connected with the 
rising star of Napoleon, in Tell this relation to the cir- 
cumstances of the time appears still more prominently. 
These noble words — 

" No, there are limits to the power of tyrants. 
When the oppressed has no more claims for right, 
And insupportable grows the load, he then 
With fearless confidence raises his hands to Heaven. 
And brings from thence his eternal rights. 



A last resort, when others fail, 
The sword remains " — 



248 WILLIAM TELL. 

have become the watch-word of all those who have 
manly courage enough not to permit themselves and 
their rights to be trodden under foot ; they contain the 
complete defence which mere force must appeal to, when 
all peaceful means are exhausted, and it must rely on 
itself alone ; nay, they show that this is the only course 
that man can take. 

Tell, in whom Switzerland's immortal love of liberty 
has found a worthy personification, is taken by the poet 
to be the centre of his drama, to show us the whole 
course over which a brave and religious people passes, 
step by step, in resisting the hand of tyranny, till at last 
it is driven to extreme measures. The picture is not 
a generalization, but a study of details. 

Tell is a hero, but he is a peasant. He shows him- 
self to be thoroughly a man of action, not of thought ; 
like all heroes, he acts, not from reflection, but from a 
free nature ; he is all of one piece. It is the physical 
courage, the Hercules nature, the nerves of steel united 
with a manly joy in self-sacrifice and danger, which 
stamp him as belonging to the circle of heroes. It is 
thus that he is introduced to us ; it is thus that every 
one recognizes him, and unconditionally trusts his skill. 

" Far better men than I would not ape Tell, 
There does not live his fellow 'mong the mountains, 

says Ruodi of him, after he has saved Baumgarteu. 
This feeling of power, that marks him everywhere, 






WILLIAM TELL. 249 

makes him disinclined to take counsel, and join alli- 
ances ; " the strong man is mightiest alone," he says, 
with entire correctness ; " a true bowman helps himself," 
and, further on, trusting his instinct — 

" I was not born to ponder and select, 
But when your course of action is resolved, 
Then call on Tell, you shall not find him fail " — ■ 

for whoever thinks too much, does little. 

Such consciousness of power, united with little incli- 
nation to reflect, is not conceivable without that joy in 
battle which TeU thus expresses — 

" I only feel the flush and joy of life, 
In starting some fresh quarry every day " — 

and so he says to Gessler : 

" Were I a man of thought, I were not called the Tell." 

Another sure mark of such a nature as his, is the 
readiness to answer every summons. Gessler is there- 
fore perfectly correct in his judgment, when, in order 
to drive Tell to the last extremity, he turns him to 
scorn — 

" To hit the bull's eye in the target, that 
Can many another do as well as thou. 
But he, methinks, is master of his craft, 
Who can at all times on his skill rely, 
Nor lets his heart disturb nor eye nor hand. 



Thv talent's universal, nothing daunts thee, 



250 - WILLIAM TELL. 

Thou canst direct, the rudder like the bow ; 
Storms fright not thee when there's a life at stake. 
Now, savior, help thyself" — 

and Ms own son is no less discerning when he says to 
his father : 

" Quick, father, show them that thou art an archer. 
He doubts thy skill, he thinks to ruin us. 
Shoot, then, and hit, though but to spite the tyrant." 

Equally shrewd in her judgment is his wife, when she 
says of the deed : 

" Oh, ruthless heart of man ! Offend his pride, 
And reason in his breast forsakes her seat. 
In his blind wrath he'll stake upon a cast 
A child's existence and a mother's heart." 

Deeply as she loves hiin, she feels this keenly. Cowards 
fear before peril conies — brave men afterward ; Tell 
sinks, convulsed, only after he has shot. This nature, so 
little inclined to long speeches and soaring plans, -still 
holds one thought, to which it has been driven, all the 
more fast. His determination to take G-essler's life 
is all the more irrevocable, and even the boat-scene, 
where a character more tamable would probably have 
reckoned upon the favor of his opponent, does not 
change his determination. The soliloquy, in which he 
tries to justify his action, while lying in wait in the 
empty street, has often been criticised, and yet, taken 
apart from its rhetorical adornment, it contains merely 
the motives that influence the soul of a brave, desper- 



WILLIAM TELL. 251 

ate man, thoroughly aroused, fearing new disaster, and 
identifying himself personally with the whole contest. 
He feels that his adversary, having brought him by 
physical and moral compulsion to a place where he 
might have murdered his own sou, has made a recourse 
to violence inevitable, for 

" My children clear, my loved and faithful wife, 
Must be protected, tyrant, from thy fury. 
When last I drew my bow with trembling hand, 
And thou, with murderous hand, a father forced 
To level at his child, when, all in vain, 
Writhing before thee, I implored thy mercy, 
Then, in the agony of my soul, I vowed 
A fearful oath, which met God's ear alone, 
That when my bow next winged an arrow's flight, 
Its aim should be thy heart!" 

Tell is too thoroughly a hero to allow any thought of 
flight or concealment to stand in the way of the contest 
in which he means to avenge himself. He remains true 
to this as to a stern necessity, when he addresses the 
parricide : 

" And dar'st thou thus confound 
Ambition's bloody crime with the dread act 
To which a father's direful need impelled him ? 
Hadst thou to shield thy children's darling heads, 
To guard thy fireside's sanctuary ? . . . 
I have no part with thee, thou art a murderer. 
I've shielded all that was most dear to me." 

If we want to pass a correct judgment upon Tell's deed, 
we must remember the time in which it occurred, when 



252 WILLIAM TELL. 

violence ruled, and force was met by force ; the personal 
motives which are so prominent in his death, are seen, 
in view of such circumstances, to be sufficient to explain 
the act, and with righteous pride he says : 

"This hand 
Has shielded yon, and set my country free. 
Freely I raise it in the face of Heaven." 




(&00&CW'i 



HEDWIG, TELL'S WIFE. 

.(William Tell.) 

Without doubt, " Tell " is that one of Schiller's plays 
which contends with " Wallenstein " for the first place ; 
although inferior in compactness to it, " Wallenstein " did 
not work so powerfully upon Schiller's contemporaries as 
this, his glorious swan-song. For this, it is in no slight 
measure indebted to the wondrous truthfulness of the 
local coloring which he has given to his picture, and 
which lends it a charm all the more peculiar and admir- 
able, in the fact that, as is well known, Schiller never 
was in Switzerland, and knew neither the country nor 
the people from personal observation. But not only is 
the scenery depicted with unsurpassed fidelity, but the 
whole mode of thought and feeling of that pious, 
powerful, and self-reliant mountain -people is drawn 
with remarkable security of hand • and Schiller has 
succeeded in uniting this happy coloring with such 
splendor of diction, that many passages of the play 
please us like a strain from Homer. There strikes us ; 



254 HEDWIG, TELL'S WIFE. 

indeed, the further similarity between these two great 
poets, that the material of the "Tell," no less than that 
of Homer's verses, lay ready at hand, capable of being 
transformed into the most genuine of all poesy — that of 
the people — and nothing remained but to give it the 
artistic form. We may therefore put the "Tell" by the 
side of the " Niebelungen " and "Faust," and regard it 
as the third of our great national poems. 

In this naturalness of coloring and bearing, the most 
admirably drawn of all the characters is Hedwig, Teh's 
wife, who claims our attention only in three short scenes, 
and yet displays the whole mode of thought of a peasant- 
woman. Loftier ideas — those directed to what is uni- 
versal, those entertained by the more heroic, resolute, 
and accomplished wife of StaufTacher — are remote from 
her ; her world is wholly in her own house, in her hus- 
band and children. For these she has a love which is 
all the more touching that, as in so many other gentle, 
womanly creations, it is most prompt to express itself 
in a lasting fear about those for whom she lives ; an 
attempt to conceal her tenderness, whose inartificial and 
naive expression deeply moves us when Tell says to her 
that Nature never made him for a herdsman, and she, 
thinking of his skill as a huntsman, breaks out : 

" Heedless tbe while of all your wife's alarms, 
As she sits watching, through long hours, at home : 
For my soul sinks with terror at the tales 
The servants tell about your wild adventures. 



HEDWIG, TELL'S WIFE. 255 

Whene'er we part, my trembling heart forebodes 
That you -will ne'er come back to me again." 

If, therefore, the artist has represented her iu the 
attitude of waiting for her husband, and thinking of 
hiin, he has done so because thus the passivity and deep 
feeling of her character are most distinctly expressed. 
To the coarse and powerful form of the housewife, 
undertaking all kinds of work, and active from morning 
to nio'ht, he has had to unite a childlike and thoughtful 
expression, gentleness, and a depth of feeling capable of 
rising to the highest passion for her dear husband and 
her loved children. She appears, perhaps, most lovely 
when, in perpetual anxiety about him, she fails to under- 
stand his courageous daring in behalf of others who 
are nothing to him ; and yet there is a pride in him 
that appears in every word as she reproaches him : 

" Wherever danger is will you be placed ; 
On you, as ever, will the burden fall. 



You took, ay, 'mid the thickest of the storm, 

The men of TJnterwald across the lake. 

'Tis a marvel you escaped. Had you no thought 

Of wife and children then ? . . . . 

To brave the lake, in all its wrath, was not 

To pnt your trust in God — 'twas tempting Him. 

Yes, you've a kind and helping hand for all, 
But be in straits, and who will lend you aid?" 

Is that not said like a genuine housewife ? To a 
woman's nature, every thing that is general becomes 



256 HED WIG, TELL' S WIFE. 

comprehensible only when it is invested with person- 
ality ; it is love that makes her understand what self- 
sacrifice is, and she sees it only in her own husband, 
while those who are with him seem selfish and mean. 
If fear does not comprehend the joy there is in danger, 
it has all the sharper eyes for impending peril. With 
what acumen she infers the wrath of the governor, 
when Tell relates to her how G-essler had met him in 
the mountains, and feared him : 

" He trembled, then, before you ? Woe the while ! 
You saw his weakness. That he'll ne'er forgive." 

Entirely like a woman is it, also, that she allows herself 
to criticise the husband whom she loves, and blame 
his acts — 

" And he could wing an arrow at his child ? 



Oh ! if he had a father's heart, he would 
Have sooner perished by a thousand deaths. 

Were I to live for centuries, I still 

Should see my boy tied up, his father's mark, 

And still the shaft would quiver in rny heart" — 

and yet, as soon as any one else accuses her of a want 
of feeling for him, she replies to Baumgarten and the 
others with annihilating scorn : 

" Hast thou tears only for thy friend's distress ? 
Say, where were you when he — my noble Tell — 
Was bound in chains ? Where was your friendship then ? 

.... Did ever Tell 
Act thus to you?" 



IIEDWIG, TELL'S WIFE. 257 

She now comes, for the first time, to a consciousness 
of her loss and grief. Passion makes her eloquent, and 
sharpens even her glance ; and she, who had just found 
fault with him, now shows at once that she is perfectly 
aware what she and they all had lost in him : 

" Without him, 
What have you power to do ? While Tell was free, 
There still iudeed was hope. Weak innocence 
Had still a friend, and the oppressed a stay. 
Tell saved you all — you cannot, all combined, 
Release hiin from his cruel prison-bonds." 

But long, painful days must yet go by before the chains 
are loosened. The news of his deed fills her with shud- 
dering fear, gradually to be converted into hope and 
joy, when she sees that it is the signal for the freeing 
of the whole land, and that he, whom she believed would 
be hunted down like a murderer, is now to return as the 
savior of his country. What thrilling emotions must 
pass through her breast ! How beautifully is this return 
pictured, when the wife, carried away alike by grief and 
joy, announces their father to the children — 

" Boys, dearest boys, your father comes to-day ! 
He lives, is free, and we and all are free ! 
The country owes its liberty to him " — ■ 

and then, turning to Walter, who claims his share of 
glory, she says : 

"Yes, yes, thou art restored to me again. 

Twice have I given thee birth, twice suffered all 
38 



25S HEDWIG, TELL'S WIFE. 

A mother's agonies for thee, my child. 

But this is past. I have you both, boys, both, 

And your dear father will be back to-day " — 

and then, when she hears the step of her loved husband, 
her voice fails her, her knees tremble ; in her agitation 
she must cling to the door, in her rapture she can only 
fall weeping into his arms ! 

Who, at the delineation of this beautiful and genu- 
inely human scene, does not feel how much closer and 
more blissful the bond that binds those who are happily 
united in marriage, than that which connects mere 
lovers ? 




-.> 1_ 



TELL'S SON. 

(William Tell.) 

We have already spoken of the "Tell" as the im- 
mortal song of freedom, the fairest and most perfect 
bequest that the departing genius left to his nation. 
The immense influence which it has exerted can be best 
measured by the manner in which the nation received 
it, and entered into the possession of this heritage of 
its most eminent son. The reply may be found in the 
colossal struggle against foreign dominion, and in the 
shaking off" of those shameful chains in which it had 
been bound through its leaders' fault or its own weak- 
ness. No other poet of the world has, probably, ever 
been able to glory in an influence upon his people so 
direct and so immense as Schiller. He shows us, as does 
no other, that it is the prerogative of powerful natures 
to form the mode of thought and even the character 
of their nation, and so to work effectively upon their 
history. What German is not filled with a just pride in 
the poet as well as in the people that bore him, when he 
looks at Germany as Schiller found it, and then regards 



260 TELL'SSON. 

the year 1813 as the echo of the strains of our great 
bard, the fairest monument that we could raise to him ? 
So all-pervading, in this drama, is the manly spirit of 
freedom, of courage, of opposition to arbitrary power, 
that it speaks out everywhere ; even in the boy Walter 
there breathes the reckless courage of a lion-like race. 
The first instruction that we hear the father give his 
boy — " a true bowman helps himself" — is certainly not 
adapted to rear an effeminate child ; and as little the 
words — 

" But they shall learn it, wife, in all its points, 
Whoe'er would carve an independent way 
Through life, must learn to ward or plant a blow." 

Courage is, in great measure, a result of education, 
and Tell, as we see, knows how to increase it ; but it 
must also, to a great extent, like a taste for freedom and 
independence, be born within a man. With Walter we 
see both, for the first question which he puts, after the 
enlargement of his geographical knowledge imparted by 
his father, respecting the advantages of the lowlands 
and their inhabitants, is : 

" Live they not free, 
As you do, on the land their fathers left them?" 

And when that is answered in the negative, he does not 
hesitate in his choice : 

" I should want breathing-room in such a land ; 
I'd rather dwell beneath the avalanches." 

Still more prompt is the youth in the thought of resist- 



TELL'S SON. 261 

ance ; when his father is arrested, he does not content 
himself with complaining, but cries : 

" This way, you men ; 
Good people, help, they're dragging him to prison ! " 

Defiance of danger is his strongest feeling ; even when 
he sees every one around him trembling, he says — 

" Grandfather, do not kneel to that bad man, 
Say, where am I to stand? I do not fear" — 

above every thing, he will not be bound : 

" Bind me ? 
No, I -will not be bound, I will be still, 
Still as a lamb, nor even draw my breath. 
But if you bind me I cannot be still, 
Then I shall writhe and struggle with my hands." 

Just as little will he allow his eyes to be bound ; the 
little heart is strong as steel, and it transports us to hear 
him say : 

" Quick, father, show them that thou art an archer. 
He doubts thy skill, he thinks to ruin us. 
Shoot, then, and hit, though but to spite the tyrant." 

That he has not a trace of fear he shows us afterward, 
when alarm for his dear child completely unmans the 
father, and the boy calls out triumphantly : 

" Here is the apple, father. Well I knew 
You would not harm your boy." 

It is natural that the artist should represent the lad at 



262 TELL'SSON. 

this moment, and give us the little blond, radiant fellow, 
in whom good-nature and unbounded daring contend so 
amiably for precedence. 

The never-ending struggles with Nature, in which the 
inhabitant of mountain -lands almost always finds him- 
self, tend, very early in a man's life, to develop those 
qualities which qualify him to battle with other men : 
cool-blooded courage, presence of mind, and a proud, 
unbending reliance on his own courage in readiness at 
every moment of his life ; Avhether he ■ climbs the steep 
Aim as a shepherd, or descends as a hunter among the 
rocks and abysses of the mountain, amid the floods of 
the summer, or the thunders of the avalanche, or the 
roaring of winter storms, he is always in sight of danger. 
In these scenes there are developed not only a love of 
freedom and independence, but also that quickness of 
glance, and that keen intelligence which are common to 
all who dwell among mountains, and whose early traces 
in our Walter form so lively a picture. The little repub- 
lican quickly becomes proudly conscious of his deed ; 
and when his mother says — " The country owes its 
liberty to him," he instantly claims his share of TelFs 
glory : 

" And I, too, mother, bore my part in it. 
I shall be named with him. My father's shaft 
Went closely by my life, and yet I shook not." 

Certainly the picture of the brave - hearted little 
fellow, as Schiller has drawn him, with his freshness and 



TELL' S SON. 263 

genuineness, is so natural a product of his rough and 
yet poetic home, that through the portraiture there 
breathes that same invigorating Alpine air which the 
poet has, in so masterly a manner, poured out over the 
whole drama. This marked local coloring that every 
thing in the " Tell " bears, which invests not only nature 
with splendor, but animates the men as well who live 
amid these colossal scenes, and which unites the two — 
man and nature — by so close and so powerful a bond 
that they cannot be separated one from another, is the 
chief charm of the piece ; and in it Schiller displays a 
capacity of realistic delineation which far surpasses, in 
poetic worth, the idealizing pathos of earlier plays. The 
power by which he is often here enabled to sketch the 
whole scene by a few touches, and stimulate our fancy 
to fill it out, is so remarkable, that German literature has 
scarcely any thing to put by its side in respect of its 
pictures of nature, and few characters of greater fresh- 
ness and amiability than that of our Walter. 







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ARNOLD VON MELCHTHAL. 

(William Tell.) 

If in Tell the whole Swiss population of that epoch 
has its representative, and shows in him how manfully 
and ably, and under the stress of how great necessity, it 
pressed on to its goal, struggling for something which it 
recognized but did not completely understand, in Arnold 
we have the representative of newer times and later 
views : what appears unconscious and in its germ in all 
others of republican tendencies and burgher spirit, in 
him comes into complete and ready consciousness. He 
is the most striking representative of the future — of 
that great democratic movement which almost contem- 
poraneously was passing through all German minds, and 
which culminated in most of the imperial cities with the 
downfall of patrician rule. 

The hot-blooded youth is the quickest of all — ready 
with decision and action ; he is the real soul of the 
attack — an Achilles in peasant's clothing. His prompt 
readiness breaks out everywhere, whether he shows us 

34 



266 AKNOLD VON MELCHTHAL. 

how he has been carried away by his exasperation, and 
paints to us, in relating the occasion of his flight, the 
pitiable condition of the whole people beneath the yoke, 
of tyranny, and his own boiling anger — 

" Was I to brook the fellow's saucy words. 
That if tbe peasant must have bread to eat, 
Why, let him go and draw the plough himself? . . . 
On this I could contain myself no longer, 
And, overcome by passion, struck him down " — 

and then, further on, speaks of his father — 

" I'm only sorry for my father's sake, 
To be away from him that needs so much 
My fostering care. The governor detests him, 
Because he hath, whene'er occasion served, 
Stood stoutly up for right and liberty " — 

or when he replies to his old friend's warning, that the 
tyrants are reaching out their hands to him : 

" They teach us Switzers what we ought to do." 

At once, after hearing of his father's misfortune, he 
breaks out : 

<; Are we defenceless ? Wherefore did we learn 
To bend the cross-bow, wield the battle-axe? 
What living creature but, in its despair, 
Finds for itself a weapon of defence ? " 

In like manner he flames up when Tell is captured. 

" This is too bad. Shall -we stand by and see them 
Drag him away before our very eyes?" 



AENOLD VON MELCHTHAL. 2G7 

In one word, with him a quick deed follows a quick 
thought. 

That he has not only a noble and grand nature, but 
is also a born party leader, is shown us in the manner 
in which his special misfortune leads him to measures 
which are general in their character. He does not find 
the means of contenting his revenge in any personal 
satisfaction, in taking the life of a single man as Tell 
does ; he will have nothing less than the overthrow of 
the entire system of tyranny, and such a culmination he 
has in mind when he raises his hand to Heaven, and 
swears : 

" Alas ! my old, blind father ! 
Thou caast no more behold the day of freedom, 
But thou shalt hear it." 

The artist has caught him at this instant, and repre- 
sented him, not alone as the young hero, but as the 
peasant, for Melchthal is both of these. He, the repre- 
sentative of the plebeian element, is the counterpart to 
Eudenz, and he it is who first breaks with the old times. 
This he shows most clearly where Walter Fiirst wishes to 
hear the counsels of those who have hitherto taken the 
lead — the noblemen of the land — to know what they 
will say respecting the compact that is to restore free- 
dom to the land : 

" First let us learn what steps the noble lords 
Of Sillinen and Attinghaus propose." 

He answers at once, and vehemently : 



268 ABNOLD VON MELCHTHAL. 

" What need of nobles ? Let us do the work 
Ourselves. Although we stood alone, methiuks 
We should be able to maintain our rights." 

Rudenz, who, likewise young, understands youth best, 
in sympathy with the democratic tendency, says cor- 
rectly of it : 

" It fits their humor well to take their seats 
Amid the nobles on the herren-bank. 
They'll have the CaBsar for their lord, forsooth — 
That is to say, they'll Lave no lord at all." 

The goal to which their views must certainly come is do 
other than that of complete independence, whereas the 
older men, at farthest, go to no greater lengths than 
Attinghausen, who defends half-way measures, and has 
in mind nothing higher than the idea of communal or 
provincial liberty. Melchthal is entirely opposed to 
these conservatives in his views about the future, 
although he is in entire concord with them respecting 
the measures to be immediately taken ; therefore, when 
StaufFacher says — 

" And this alone should be the free man's duty, 
To guard the empire that keeps guard for him " — 

Melchthal replies at once : 

" He's but a slave that would acknowledge more." 

The trained politician, Attinghausen, discerns, at the 
outset, the tendency of which Melchthal is the youthful 
representative, and prophesies in sure presentiment : 



ARNOLD VON MELCHTIAL. 269 

" And have the peasantry dared such a deed 
On their own charge, without the nobles' aid — 
Eelied so much on their own proper strength 2 
Nay, then, indeed, they want our help no more, 
We may go down to death cheered by the thought 
That after us the majesty of man 
Will live, and be maintained by other hands. . . . 
The old is crumbling down — the times are changing — 
And from the ruins blooms a fairer life." 

Most emphatic of all are Arnold's words, where he 
jealously glances from the leaders of the alliance to the 
nobility, and says to Kudenz — 

" Take my hand, 
A peasant's hand, and with it, noble sir, 
The gage and the assurance of a man ! 
Without us, sir, what would the nobles be ? 
Our order is more ancient, too, than yours ! " — 

and so, when he relates what occurred at the taking 
of Sarnen Castle : 

" Had he been nothing but our baron, then 
We should have been most chary of our lives ; 
But he was our confederate, and Bertha 
Honored the people." 

Genuinely republican is he at the end, when he calls 
out, in tones of triumph : 

" Thus, now, my friends, with light and merry hearts, 
We stand upon the wreck of tyranny ; 
And gallantly have we fulfilled the oath 
Which we at Rootli swore, confederates ! 



270 AKNOLD VON MELCHTHAL. 

" Walter Furst. The work is but begun. "We 
must be firm. 
For be assured, the king will make all speed 
To avenge his viceroy's death, and reinstate 
By force of arms the tyrant we've expelled. 
" Melchthal. Why, let him come with all his 
armaments ! 
The foe within has fled before our arms ; 
We'll give him welcome, warmly, from without ! " — 

and gives ready utterance to thought of unconditional 
freedom. 



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BERTHA YON BRUNECK. 

(William Tell.) 

The fresh, powerful character of the rich heiress, 
whose love-episode with Eudenz has been frequently- 
attacked by critics, appears to us, nevertheless, not to 
be so superfluous as some have insisted that it is. If 
Eudenz appears entirely indispensable to the play, as the 
representative of that part of the nobility which, blended 
with the splendor of bearing rule, had succumbed to a 
foreign yoke, it is, unhappily, an only too true trait 
which has appeared at all times, especially with the 
Germans, and which, even in the time when Schiller 
wrote, was only too prominent in the Westphalian court 
and elsewhere. When Eudenz says to Attinghausen, 
" I am a stranger only in this house," and his uncle 
replies, skilfully portraying the entire worthlessness of 
the grounds which drive him to such a condition — 

"Alas! thou art indeed! Alas! that home 
To thee has grown so strange ! Oh, lily, lily, 
I scarce do know thee now, thus decked in silks, 
The peacock's feather flaunting in thy cap, 



272 BERTHA VON BRUNECK. 

And purple mantle round thy shoulders flung. 
Thou look'st upou the peasant with disdain, 
And takest with a blush his honest greeting. 

.... Thou alone 
Art all unmoved amid the general grief. 
Abandoning thy friends, thou tak'st thy stand 
Beside thy country's foes, and, as in scorn 
Of our distress, pursuest giddy joys, 
Courting the smiles of princes all the while 
Thy country bleeds beneath their cruel scourge" — 

the relation of this picture to the sights which the poet 
was observing is as little to be overlooked as that of 
rnany other passages in " Tell." 

Pitiful as are the grounds which Rudenz assigns for 
his frivolous and faithless course — 

" Yes, I conceal it not, it doth offend 
My inmost soul to hear the stranger's gibes, 
That taunt us with the name of jjeasant-nobles. 



'Tis vain for us to strive against the king, 
The world pertains to him. Shall we, alone, 
In mad, presumptuous obstinacy, strive 
To break that mighty chain of lands which he 
Hath drawn around us with his giant grasp ? " — 

they are, nevertheless, in the main, those which have 
prevalence even in our own period ; and, at the time 
of Napoleon, they were uttered with the greatest shame- 
lessness by all dependants of the Rhine Confederation ; 
and, for a long time, it helped little that the genuine 
conservatives, the heroic characters in whom the German 



BERTHA VON BEUNECK. 273 

nobility even then was by no means poor, replied, like 
Attinghausen, to the deserters : 

" No, if our blood must flow, let it be shed 
In our own cause. We purchase liberty 
More cheaply far than bondage. . . . 
Cling to the land, the dear land of thy sires, 
Grapple to that with thy whole heart and soul ; 
Thy power is rooted deep and strongly here." 

The yonth, both of whose tendencies we see repre- 
sented in Rudenz and Melchthal, must, in ushering in 
the new epoch, pass through their own special course 
of culture. Rudenz is brought to a happy issue by the 
sound and genuine nature of the lady who had knit 
her destinies to his, who shows the Swiss girl in every 
feature, although she does not belong particularly to 
the forest towns. Her bold heart beats with woman's 
loyalty to the home she loves ; and what the reasons of 
the uuele cannot effect, her wrathful gentleness easily 
accomplishes, for no man, who has a spark of honor, 
can stand beshamed in the presence of her he loves. He 
can, however, be led astray by false premises and untrue 
systems, whereas woman always remains true to the 
great demands of nature, always returns readily to them. 
When, therefore, she confronts her misguided lover with 
the annihilating power of truth, and holds up to him 
the simple dilemma — 

" And dare you speak to me of love, of truth — 
You, that are faithless to your nearest ties ? . . . 



271 BERTHA VON BRTJNECK. 

Think you to find me in the traitors' ranks ? 

Now, as I live, I'd rather give my hand 

To Gessler's self, all despot though he be, 

Than to the Switzer who forgets his birth, 

And stoops to be the minion of a tyrant ! . . . 

What dearer duty to a noble soul 

Than to protect weak, suffering innocence, 

And vindicate the rights of the oppressed? . . . 

But you whom Nature and your knightly vow 

Have given them as their natural protector, 

Yet who desert them, and abet their foes 

In forging shackles for your native land, 

You, you it is that deeply wound and grieve me" — 

her logic is of that kind that a youthful spirit can 
scarcely resist. The straightforward, noble nature of 
the girl tears to pieces, as it were a spider's web, the 
trivial reasons which he gives to her, when he replies, 
as so many in the time of Napoleon did : 

" Is not my country's welfare all my wish ? 
What seek I for her but to purchase peace 
'Neath Austria's potent scejrtre ? " 

Bertha is a genuine, fresh Alpine rose. She does not 
plume herself with the confession of the love she bears ; 
she throws it boldly into the scale, in order to secure 
her lover to the righteous cause : 

" Rudenz. Bertha, you hate me, you despise me. 

" Bertha. Nay, 

And if I did, 'twere better for my peace. 
But to see him despised and despicable, 
The man whom one mio-ht love ! " 






BERTHA VON BRUNECK. 275 

And that she really loves him is proved by the 
impatience with which she bears the necessity of scorn- 
ing him. But nothing works more powerfully upon us 
than when any one speaks out his good opinion of our 
character, and expresses a belief that we can do nothing 
wrong. Seldom are we able to abstain from an attempt 
to justify so good an opinion. When, therefore, Bertha 
says, further — 

" No, no, the noble is not all extinct 
Witbin yon ; it but slumbers, I will rouse it " — 

her victory is already won ; for what lover could shun 
an opportunity to show her he loves that he is noble ? 

A woman, bold by nature, becomes fond of command, 
and takes a part in the duties of man only when she sees 
that he is failing in his duty, and becoming weak ; she 
returns at once and all the more gladly to her sphere, 
so soon as he returns to duty, and shows courage and 
decision. Then she appears only as the loving wife, 
careful for her husband's welfare. And so, if in the 
first scene we have Bertha overmastering Rudenz with 
her proud scorn, if she appears not only as the resolute, 
rough German girl, but also as a member of the secret 
opposition, she lets it all drop when her lover, returning 
to his duty, fearlessly confronts Gessler with the words : 

" I bave been dumb 
To all the oppressions I was doomed to see. . . . 
But to be silent longer were to be 
A traitor to my king and country both. . . . 



276 BERTHA VON BR UNECK. 

I madly thought 
That I should best advance the general weal, 
By adding sinews to the emperor's power. 
The scales have fallen from mine eyes." 

She now thinks only of hiin, and seeks to hold him 
back ; the hero-maiden disappears, yielding before the 
loving woman, who, at last, finds her true home in the 
heart of the lover whom she herself has restored to his 
people. 






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GESSLER. 

(William Tell.) 

Nothing is better adapted to awaken the sense 
of justice, native to every man, than when they, 
whose duty it is to administer justice, convert it into 
its opposite, and turn the sway, in whose name right 
and law are administered, from a blessing into a curse, 
and shatter them. For all rule is given that justice 
may be kept sacred. The instant when it denies this 
first principle, it irrevocably brings into question its 
own right to be. The most divine law ceases to be 
so when an administrator of it demeans himself in 
such a way as to satirize his own office. 

But if a nature, arbitrary at the foundation, suc- 
ceeds in gaining the power to administer law and jus- 
tice, and takes advantage of their shelter in order to 
promote its own whims and lusts, it grows, step by 
step, more grasping and overbearing, and will inevi- 
tably bring things into extremities on one side or 
another. 

The portrait of such an arbitrary and tyrannical 



278 G E S S L E E . 

representative of supreme power is presented in Gessler 
with such consummate skill as to make an impression 
so deep that his name has become a proverb for des- 
potism. True to his general method of making what 
is human neither devilish nor divine, but simply subject 
to counter-motives, the poet has painted this crafty and 
malicious character in a manner which makes him at 
least intelligible to us. 

Deceiving himself and others, he seeks to justify his 
native inclination to cruelty and hardness by political 
motives — by that state-craft that has always been used 
as a mantle to cover every thing base, and an appeal to 
which allows him the pleasure of exercising a certain 
measure of political activity, and of winning some 
applause. He discovers, also, a means of giving his 
cruelty a fair look ; it is the old doctrine of all tyrants, 
constantly emerging into view, that the end sanctifies 
the meaus, when Gessler says to Harras : 

" Say what you please. I am the emperor's servant, 
And my first care must be to do his pleasure. 
He did not send me here to fawn and cringe, 
And coax these boors into good-humor. No — 
Obedience he must have. We soon shall see 
If king or peasant is to lord it here." 

And when Harras reminds him of the rights of the 
people, in the true spirit of a despot he answers : 

" 'Twas not in sport that I set up the cap 
In Altdorf, or to try the people's hearts. 



GESSLEE. 279 

All this I knew before. I set it up 
That tbey might learn to bend those stubborn necks 
They cany far too proudly. And I placed, 
What well I knew their eyes could never brook, 
Full in the road which they perforce must pass, 
That when their eye fell on it they might call 
That lord to mind whom they too much forget." 

Armgart thus reminds him of his duty : 

" Justice, my lord — ay, justice ! Thou art judge, 
The deputy of the emperor, of Heaven. 
Then do thy duty : as thou hopest for justice. 
From Him who rules above, show it to us" — 

and G-essler answers entirely in character : 

" Hence ! Drive this daring rabble from my sight." 

The governor cries out about impudence, as all do 
who conceal their own worthlessness behind the majesty 
of authority, and concludes by saying, as tyrants have 
done in all ages : 

"Too mild a ruler am I to this people ; 
Their tongues are all too bold, nor have they yet 
Been tamed to due submission as they shall be : 
I must take order for the remedy. 
I will subdue this stubborn mood of theirs, 
And crush the soul of liberty within them." 

This doctrine of unconditional obedience, of impudence 
on the part of the oppressed, and of too great mildness 
on the part of the oppressor, has it not always been 
the dialectic of despotism ? We shaU hardly err if we 



280 G E S S L E E . 

conceive that the governor is a man who, long living 
in a subordinate position, has succeeded in elevating 
himself above the shoulders of other men, and revenges 
himself threefold upon them for the treatment which he 
has received. Our feelings are never wounded without 
we seek to gain satisfaction, as we often see in the case 
of subalterns, and even of soldiers ; nor can there be a 
wound left in the spirit whose poison does not gradually 
extend, and fill the system. This psychological develop- 
ment in the soul of the tyrant is all the more correctly 
portrayed in the fact that, after he has been- driven 
by a bad conscience to tremble before Tell — what no 
man could forgive to him who caused his fear, least of 
all a blood-loving tyrant — a way is opened to that 
unheard-of cruelty with which he afterward treats 
Tell, in order to compensate himself for his previous 
fear. 

Specially peculiar, and in the genuine spirit of the 
Middle Ages, is the touch of humor in Gessler ; he feels 
himself comfortably situated, and inclined to jest in his 
role of tyrant — a sure proof that he is acting out his 
nature, and not something which has been superinduced. 
The goal which he places before Tell corresponds more 
or less to the wild and rough, yet adventurous character 
of the time ; it indicates the scorn with which the aris- 
tocrat was accustomed to look down upon the plebeian. 
The despotic instinct is also well defined, where Gessler 
disputes the ancient privilege of the people to carry arms : 



GESSLEE. 2S1 

" The proud right which the poor hind assumes 
Offends the country's highest lord ; 
No one should arm himself hut he that rules." 

The tyrant's arrogance is naturally increased by the 
antagonism of a few fearless natures, who generally fall 
the first victims, while the masses only gradually become 
familiar with ideas of opposition, and, remembering the 
sacrifice of their brethren, are at length aroused to a 
combat for life or death. Thus a despotic temper, 
apparently strengthened at first by a temporary gratifi- 
cation, must necessarily either destroy a ruler, or reduce 
the conquered people to an apathetic serfdom, where 
every vestige of independence is destroyed. The poet, 
in his description of the simple and undeveloped life of 
a shepherd race, expresses this universal and impressive 
truth, that, among an oppressed people, nothing healthy 
can flourish — uo inspiration of the human mind in poetry 
or art can succeed, nor can any advancement be looked 
for even in the rudest material science ; and that, there- 
fore, the first duty .of him who will not renounce the 
desire of human progress, is resistance to despotism. 

36 




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TURANDOT. 

( Turandot.) 

The proud Turandot is a twin-sister of our northern 
Brunhilde, with this difference, that the former makes 
the competition of her suitors intellectual, while the 
latter commits it to physical strength. They are per- 
sonifications of that maiden pride which revolts against 
the thought of submission. Both these women have 
strong natures, full of the consciousness of their own 
power, and rebel especially against the idea of becoming 
the possession of any man, because neither of them 
had as yet met with a lover who had impressed her 
with his superiority. 

In Turandot we see how it was impossible that her 
weak father, or any of his courtiers, could instil into 
her mind the idea of the subjection of her sex, since the 
poet was careful to represent those surrounding her 
as either contemptible or ridiculous. If we could be 
malicious, we might infer, from this disposition for con- 
test, that both women, in their inmost hearts, nursed the 
wish to be conquered. 



284 TUEANDOT. 

It is also evident that the crowd of crazy lovers, 
greedy for her dowry, could not increase the esteein of 
Turandot for the male sex. She will have no master 
who is not worthy to rule her, and whose merit she is 
not forced to acknowledge, in his possession of dis- 
tinguished intellect and courage. Hence come the pro- 
posed enigmas to her suitors, as well as the results with 
which she threatens them. It is but reasonable that he 
who aspires to so great a prize should be worthy of it ; 
that he should possess sufficient penetration to discover 
her thoughts, however obscured by words ; that he 
should have presence of mind not to lose, even for a 
moment, complete control of himself, in view of the 
terrors of death, as well as of the bewildering power of 
beauty, and while, at the same time, the strongest of 
passions is raging in his own bosom. If we find this 
cruel, Truffaldin replies with all authority : 

" There's no command that princes take tlieir necks 
To Pekin — no one calls them hither. . . . 

We strike 
No head from him who brings it with. him. 
Already has he lost wlio stakes it here ! 

.... Every one can woo : 
Nothing is easier than to journey 
As a suitor. He lives at no expense, 
Pampers himself, and makes the generous house 
Of his desired relative his home. 
How many a younger son or needy squire — 
Whose carpet-bag gives room for all his goods — 
Subsists upou his love's rejections ! 



TURANDOT. 2S5 

Sometime this place was like a hostelry 
"Where came proud princes and adventurers, 
"Who wooed the emperor's wealthy daughter. 
E'en the meanest thinks himself quite worthy 
To embrace the maiden's peerless beauty. 
Thus, comrade, you may see how honest 
Is the princess with her eager suitors : 
Before marriage she dispenses riddles — 
Afterward, indeed, it would be worse ; 
For he is lost who cannot solve the words 
His wife proposes during marriage ! . . . 

" Brigella. Well; I care not — let them be enigmas, 
If thus she has the whim to show her wit. 
But must it be that amorous princes 
Lose their heads because they cannot tell 
Her hidden meaning ? That is barbarous ; 
Reason nor honor can have part therein. 
When did you ever hear that loving men 
Must die for what is hard to understand ? 

" Trvffaldin. And, blockhead, how could she avoid 
the fools — 
W T ho think presumption is their wisdom — 
If they perchance had nothing else to risk 
But once to be disgraced in the divan ? 
No one would shrink to venture on the ice, 
If all the danger were a harmless fall. 
WTio fears th' amusing puzzle ? 'Tis a play 
Of words enlisting thought and making mirth ; 
And those who, for the witty princess' sake, 
And her great treasure, might have stayed at home, 
Would come for the solution of her thoughts ; 
For few think less of their own mental skill 
Than of the wealth and beauty of a spouse ! " 

Even if the faculty that solves all the problems 



286 TURANDOT. 

makes the suitor worthy of a throne, it does not of 
Turandot's heart, since an intellectual and courageous, 
but, at the same time, emotionless and merely ambitious 
man, might obtain her. It is this error in her calcula- 
tion that fills her with apprehension when Kalaf appears, 
and so easily masters her wisdom. The uncertainty, 
whether love — which is the only return for love— will 
be reciprocated, drives her to desperation. 

Moreover, a profound anxiety occupies Turandot's 
heart, because she hears within herself a voice speak- 
ing for Kalaf — she is sensible of the power which this 
stranger exerts over her, and, on his first entrance, 
she says : 

....'' No one yet entered 
The divan -who e'er could win my love. 
But this man knows the art." 

Proud and strong natures always rebel against that 
which would conquer them : it is the reaction of an 
intact, healthy temperament against the sweet poison 
of love. Even in the common affairs of life, any one has 
the right to set his own price on himself, and the only 
question is, whether he will find a purchaser ; but it 
proves that one has a just estimate of himself if he is 
readily appreciated. Turandot's pride has forced her to 
demand the highest stake — the venture of her own life — 
and she is right, because no one ought to unite another 
life with his own, if he is not ready to give his own for 
it. Every man seeking wedlock should be willing to do 



TURANDOT. 287 

this. There is consequently no cruelty in the desire of 
the princess, however quaint and difficult the manner in 
which the fable is represented. 

Though Kalaf has shown that by his endowments he 
is worthy, yet much is wanting to enable Turandot to 
be certain of his love ; she therefore confesses hers only 
after she has made him pass through trial — when she, on 
her side, has conquered him by the solution of a problem — 
since by this it was in her power to give herself freely to 
him, as being the most deserving, after having assured 
herself of his love by his noble demeanor in temptation. 

The artist has represented to us the charming sphinx 
in the act of drawing aside her veil, after she has pro- 
pounded the third enigma to Kalaf; hoping to confuse 
him by her overwhelming beauty, and thus bear away 
a double triumph, of which, however, she is not sure, 
though she wiU not acknowledge her fear. We cannot 
dislike her in this mental struggle, since we know how 
great her humiliation must be, if, after all that has hap- 
pened, she finds herself conquered. The more precious 
the metal the more intense must be the fire that is to 
melt it. 




A.FUirclmuzn7i j-cvh. 



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' 



K A L A F . 

(Turandot.) 

Works of art are organizations like man himself, 
and have a sonl like liim — that is, a transference of the, 
intellect or feeling winch originated them ; and yet 
another often understands them better than their author. 
Thus Schiller shows us the soul of Gozzi's fable, which he 
reconstructed as " Turandot," much better than Gozzi 
himself; by means of Brigella's and Truffaldiu's prosaic 
Sancho-Panza-like wisdom, he exhibits, in their burlesque 
dialogue, the principal idea. 

One of the characteristics of our poet is the almost 
total absence of naivete\ He is always conscious, and so 
he has but little pleasure in the play, with its fantastic 
laissez alter. The genial capriciousness of the fable does 
not suit him. He places it involuntarily on too real a 
foundation, by the concise grandeur of his language, and 
the distinctness of his sketches. He fills up his figures 
with a truthfulness and consequence, by the side of which 
the mere story reminds us of theatrical tinsel in the pres- 
ence of really precious vestments. The creation of the 

37 



290 KALAF. 

Italian was ingenuous, and it was sufficient for him to 
relate a curious tale, from love of the wonderful, not of 
the deeper meaning therein contained. With Schiller 
the reverse is the case : as a philosopher it is a necessity 
with him to discover the secret import of facts, especially 
of those the most strange ; to follow the traces of a 
flighty play or a voluptuous fancy, and reveal from what 
idea or sentiment it arose ; to bring out this its soul into 
full light, and let it grow in the sunshine of his intellect. 
At least thus he treated Gozzi's child's fable ; he under- 
stood it aright, and brought it to maturity and meaning. 

The poet indicates his greater intelligence by the 
manner in which he introduces the two principal char- 
acters — Turandot and Kalaf — giving a motive for every 
action, especially ascribing to the prince those qualities 
that alone can attach a high - spirited and imperial 
woman. 

Kalaf has seen life in all its phases, and passed 
throuo'h the severest trials with a strong and sound 
mind. Though cast from the summit of happiness into 
the deepest misery, notwithstanding his manly resistance, 
yet adversity could not weaken his heart, nor change his 
regal mode of thinking. He always met misfortune with 
courage, and humiliation with pride, permitting them to 
gain no ascendency over him. He might be precipitated 
from a throne, but his noble nature could not be sullied, 
while, at the same time, he became more experienced 
and resolute. Thus only could he be dangerous to one 



KALAF. 291 

like Turandot — a woman seeking not a love-sick boy, but 
a friendly and true man. 

With great wisdom, the poet gives him another 
qualification that must endear him to a lady jealous of 
admiration, and who considers it the greatest triumph to 
conquer one hitherto unmoved by temptation : he has 
never loved, but in fact despises the female sex. He 
abhors the strategy of Turandot, which appears a mere 
caprice, until love opens his eyes : 

" And does such idiot live who ventures thus 
His life for wealth or heartless beauty ! . . . . 
How could holy Nature make a mouster 
Armed against all human love and mercy ? 
Down to the dark abj-ss of Tartarus 
With this Turandot and those who, like her, 
See naught to love but what is in themselves ! " 

Kalaf laughs at the possibility of falling in love with 
the princess, when Barak wishes to prevent him from 
contemplating her portrait : 

" You are not wise. But if you feel thus weak, 
I am not so. No woman's beauty e'er 
Hath pleased these eyes, even for a moment, 
Much less subdued my heart. And surely what 
No living, smiling charms could e'er effect 
Fears not the colors of the -artist's brush. 
Vain is your care ! My mind, good Barak, 
Has other occupation than love's folly." 

There are fields of sentiment, as well as of thought, 
that remain hidden until some accident suddenly reveals 



292 K A L A F . 

them to our mental vision, affording us an insight into 
an unimagined world, which cannot fail to surprise and 
interest us. 

Thus it is with Kalaf, in reference to love and 
women. He despises them because he has never known 
the heavenly influence of a union of beauty and intellect, 
having always noticed in his own experience that the one 
did not imply the coexistence of the other in the same 
person. But if he had not abhorred Turandot, her por- 
trait would not have made such an enchanting impres- 
sion on him. He is the more affected just because he 
judges her harshly- — because he has no idea of the 
happiness resulting from the possession of a noble 
woman's heart. 

As yet, however, egotism is mingled with this senti- 
ment, for he also considers the dowry of the bride when 
he resolves to risk all to gain her : 

"Barak! betray me not. — Now or never! 
This is the trying hour of my fortune. 
Aud why prolong a despicable life ? 
The die being cast, I gain a woman 
Fairest of earth's daughters, aud an empire — 
Or lose what then becomes a hated life." 

As with Turandot, so with Kalaf — love must soften 
and purify him before a true union can take place. 
This process of the gradual elevation of the passion 
to magnanimity and devotion, the poet has represented 
with the inimitable hand of a master, for Gozzi was too 



K A L A F . 293 

sensual to have had a conjecture of what is essential to 
genuine love. 

The artist has painted Kalaf while solving the first 
problem, having as yet a full consciousness of his superior 
intellect, so that an ironic smile wreathes his lips ; the 
adventure pleases him, and he betrays a secret sense of 
success. The rapid changes in life so frequent at Ori- 
ental courts induce an enjoyment in what is unusual and 
hazardous ; it was therefore absolutely necessary to intro- 
duce this element in the person of the prince. 







£&P7Zt 



DEMETRIUS. 

(Demetrius.) 

One of the most distinguishing traits of Schiller's 
genius is political insight — an acute penetration into 
state affairs — a profound understanding of the life of 
nations in general, and of each in particular. In this 
respect, he manifests in his writings, considering the 
simplicity and seclusion of his life, an almost incompre- 
hensible gift of anticipation. It seems, indeed, incredible 
that his little journeys from Stuttgart to Weimar could 
have given him such power of delineation in reference to 
characters differing so much in race and education. We 
can, in a small degree, account for this by the fact that, 
between the years 1792 and 1805, representatives of 
nearly all the nations of Europe passed through that 
district. The unceasing struggle of his day is certainly 
reflected much more in Schiller's muse than is generally 
conceded, for the noise of battle may be heard not only 
in " Wallenstein," but in " Tell," and the " Maid of Or- 
leans." We see in them all the armed movements of the 
spirit of his time. 



296 DEMETRIUS. 

But nowhere do we find that rare political and 
national insight more brilliantly at work than in the 
fragment " Demetrius." The description of the Diet, 
which opens the piece, is unsurpassed. We fancy we 
see this Polish rigime before our very eyes — that rest- 
less aristocratic republic, with its unending intrigues 
and frivolities. We recognize everywhere • the national 
instability, faithlessness, and moral corruption, but some- 
times also a chivalrous knighthood, and a superabun- 
dance of intellect, while, at the same time, we are 
reminded of the universal lack of practical sense and 
tenacity, so that that unhappy country appears as a 
badly-counselled and spendthrift youth. How the Poles 
could easily conquer, but not retain — how they felt the 
heroism of physical contest, but were callous to civic 
virtues, and loved the war - horse, but despised the 
plough — all this is represented very skilfully in " Deme- 
trius." No history could so well describe the anarchy 
of the "Polish Diet" as those few scenes which the poet 
devotes to its sessions, and which give the impression 
that the nation, notwithstanding some noble qualities, 
was incapable of a high civilization. 

The filling up of the several parts is as excellent as 
the general sketch. The influence of the women is 
especially noticed, beautiful, intellectual, and patriotic, 
as they were, but also ambitious and cunning, and who 
find their representative in Marina. The power of the 
clergy over the popular will is also inimitably portrayed. 



DEMETRIUS. 297 

Equally well, so far as the work extends, are the 
Russians contrasted with the Poles. Both are Slavonian 
races, distinguished by semi-barbarous manners, an easily- 
excited imagination, and a pleasure in intrigue. The 
Russians, however, have the advantage of greater attach- 
ment to their dynasty, and a more willing submission to 
authority ; they are less independent, but more faithful 
and honest. 

With this background appear the two figures of 
Marfa and Demetrius — the former terrifying us with her 
thirst for revenge. German poetry has given us nothing 
more impressive than the scene where she thinks she has 
the means of retaliation in her hands : 

" Oh, I can at last my heart unburden, 

And speak of vengeful but restrained hate ! 

.... Who was it that exiled me, 

Opening a tomb for one who was not dead, 

But breathing in the bloom of youth's fresh strength 

With all its pure and loving sympathies ? 

Who tore away my son, forever dear, 

And bargained with assassins for his life ? — - 

Maternal sorrow has no words to tell 

Of the long watches in the starry night, 

When yearning I looked up to righteous Heaven, 

And seemed to doubt its justice by my tears ! 

The tardy hour of vengeance is at hand — 

Already are the mighty in my power. . . . 

It is my son ! — I cannot doubt it — 

It is he ! and with him moves an army 

To free his mother, and avenge her wrongs ! 

The sweet wind, kissing my wearied brow, 
38 



298 DEMETRIUS. 

Tells mc of trumpets and the martial tread 
Of the deliverer. Come from your steppes 
Iu the north, and from the southern forest-shade, 
My friends of distant climes and varied tongues ! 
Come, countless as the angry ocean-waves, 
And gather to the standards of your king ! 
.... Ob, sun, bear on your radiant wings 
My hope ; and thou, the unimprisoned air, 
That quickly makest distant voyages, 
Convey to him my passionate longing ! — 
I have nothing now but these my prayers, 
Which, winged from my loving inmost heart, 
I send to Heaven for thee, my son ! " 

Demetrius engages our sympathy by his houesty and 
linn belief in his right — a sympathy increased by the 
intelligence and subtlety with which he finds means to 
gain adherents. He is represented at the moment when 
he affirms to the Polish Diet his claims to the throne of 
the Czars, showing as a proof the cross hung around his 
neck at his baptism. 

Demetrius indicates everywhere the Slavonic charac- 
teristics in the highest degree : eloquence, quick percep- 
tion, inherent sagacity, and good -nature, as well as 
excitability, and attacks of unbridled anger, in one of 
which he kills a rival ; and, in another, the man who had 
substituted him in place of the true prince. The poet 
was obliged to reveal as much as possible this dexterous, 
panther-like trait, as well as the love for barbarous pomp, 
distino'uishino - the Slavons. 

If this fragment of a tragedy gives unfulfilled promise 



DEMETRIUS. 299 

of a masterpiece, it can only heighten onr sorrow that 
death called Schiller so early from his labor, when he 
had just become perfect in art, and would, doubtless, 
have given to the world many other evidences of tran- 
scendent genius. 



THE PRINCE. 

(The Ghost-Seer.) 

The moral of Schiller's celebrated novelette " The 
Ghost-Seer " is, that, if we give but the little finger 
to the tempter, he will soon take the whole man. It 
gives us the history of the conversion to Catholicism 
of a German Protestant prince, representing to us his 
character and fate — a chef-d'oeuvre of psychological 
development. 

Bred at a North German court, the third prince of 
the blood, he had little hope of ascending the throne. 
His education had not been properly attended to, for he 
had received no high connected culture ; what he had 
resulted only from superficial knowledge, the necessary 
languages, and very desultory reading, as is the case with 
many of his equals in rank. Such reading, resorted to in 
ennui, and merely intended to pass the time, had greatly 
excited his fancy, and, aided by the unpleasant circum- 
stances in which a younger prince always finds himself, 
rendered him reserved, absent-minded, and meditative. 
As the best refuge, he entered the army at an early age, 



302 T II E P E I N C E . 

and was in several campaigns. The service gave outward 
dignity to his character, while experience strengthened 
his natural peculiarities. Thus passed his youth, but a 
divided existence between the duties of the camp and a 
species of day-dreaming, as weU as an inherent and 
acquired timidity, had prevented him from associating 
with women, so that at the age of thirty-five, and not- 
withstanding his fine exterior, he was a novice in respect 
to ladies' society. Add to these antecedents the limited 
means of a younger prince, whose position, being entirely 
dependent on the throne, is always a miserable one, and 
it is easily explained why a passionate and confiding 
character should be inclined to gravity, or even to melan- 
choly. Incompleteness of education, as well as the list- 
lessness induced by a want of useful occupation, aids 
greatly, in such a case, to incline the mind to the con- 
templation of the novel and mysterious. It is much 
easier to see wonders, and believe miracles, than to 
study the laws of life and Nature, especially when one is 
of an indolent and obstinate temperament. In such cir- 
cumstances the mind — when conscious of the presence of 
evil-disposed spies — entertains a kind of aversion to what 
is real, and a profound desire to catch a glimpse of the 
spiritual — that is, to be deceived. Thus our prince fol- 
lows, without much thought, the allurements of the 
Armenian and the Sicilian. It is at the incantation- 
scene that the artist represents him, making prominent 
his courage and calmness in supposed danger. The 



THEPKINCE. 303 

sound common-sense which he betrays, when afterward 
judging of these deceptions, is quite relative, as from the 
beginning he shows too much readiness to believe in the 
supernatural. 

The need of deep religious impressions is here mani- 
fest. The prince has become acquainted with Protest- 
antism from its grim fanatic side, which sees in works 
of art only the enticements of the Evil One, and in life 
itself nothing but a preparation for death. No wonder 
that this form of faith did not attract him. 

The first illusions in reference to modern miracles, 
as well as pride in his power of discernment to expose 
them, lead him naturally into unbelief, for both the false- 
hoods of superstition and the falsehoods of infidelity 
are well known to have control alternately in the human 
soul. Skepticism advanced so much the nearer to him, 
as in the last century it was extensively associated with 
aristocratic privileges, which gave to it a sort of char- 
acter. Keligion in the prince's youth had appeared to 
him always in a most repulsive form — as a wearying 
system of espionage. But while he gradually frees 
himself from the bigotry of Protestantism by his own 
exertion, and inclines to the bigotry of unbelief, he can- 
not help glorifying himself in his conquest ; he strength- 
ens his independence, and diminishes the former dis- 
trust of his own judgment. When one begins to 
admire himself, he soon expects admiration from others ; 
he needs and seeks flatterers, and, if a prince, he is sure 



304 THE PRINCE. 

to find them. At first he listens gladly, and finally be- 
lieves them. 

This gradual change in a naturally modest and retir- 
ing character is very well described, as also the fact that, 
when such change has proceeded to a certain extent, 
momentous consequences are often the result. 

His usual reserve has forsaken the prince ; he first 
delights in being brilliant, as a woman, merely by per- 
sonal appearance — without any assistance from considera- 
tions of rank — but he soon uses them to promote the 
respect he covets. This produces larger pecuniary ex- 
penditure, ending in disorder and disgust. A man of 
princely position becomes thereby ill-humored, and hence 
appears a stronger inclination to amusement. He wishes 
to flee from the uncomfortable reproaches of his own 
mind, and rushes into still greater difficulties. Instead 
of acknowledging the blame, he ascribes it to others, and 
feels the necessity of silencing, if he can, the voice of 
conscience. He is in that state of excitement when 
love, in its most seductive form, easily conquers a heart 
hitherto proof against temptation. 

It is therefore clear that the object of the prince's 
violent passion — the Grecian maid — must have great 
influence over a nature such as his. We have sufficient 
motive for his conversion to Catholicism in the death of 
this beloved person, considering the respect with which 
he regards her memory ; in his irretrievable financial 
embarrassment, united with estrangement from his former 



THE PRINCE. 305 

religious principles ; in the longing for some new 
and mystic system, offering him consolation for the 
sudden loss of his beloved and redemption from earthly 
troubles, while, at the same time, the bonds uniting him 
to his home are apparently and without cause broken 
asunder. 




- 



THE GRECIAN MAID. 

(The Ghost-Seer.) 

It is well known that " The Ghost-Seer " was originally 
intended to appear in two parts, though we have only 
received the first. The second was probably designed to 
make us better acquainted with the fair unknown, who 
only appears toward the close, in a kind of episode, 
which at best is but fragmentary, and calculated to 
arouse our curiosity. As the heroine, she does not 
further the action of the plot, the prince being already 
far gone toward Catholicism without her personal pres- 
ence or her prayers. 

He meets the supposed Grecian maid first at church, 
and describes her appearance in so vivid a manner that 
the painter introduces her as she was then seen, " half- 
kneeling, half-prostrate, near the altar," dressed in black 
moire-antique, " that, closely fitting her arms and waist, 
flowed around her like the rich folds of a Spanish robe ; 
her long blond hair, in two broad plaits, had fallen, of 
its own weight, from beneath her veil, and lay in dis- 
order on her shoulders ; one hand rested on the crucifix, 



30S THE GRECIAN MAID. 

ancl ; gently inclining, she supported herself with the 
other." This picture suits better a German than a 
Grecian girl, and it finally appears that she is a Ger- 
man beauty, who, under the glowing sky of Italy, 
awakens in the prince a passion altogether unconscious 
of the charms of any fair Venetian. 

The manner in which the handsome incognita is 
announced : first, as the friend or beloved of the Ar- 
menian, who plays the principal intriguer's role ; then, 
as if she also inflamed the heart of the Marquis Civitella ; 
afterward painted as a Madonna, purposely put up for 
sale ; and, finally, as the fair devotee or penitent in the 
chapel, — all this makes us suspect her of being a con- 
federate of the Armenian, the cardinal, and the marquis, 
in their difficult undertaking of converting the prince. 
Nevertheless, Schiller remorselessly lets her die, just to 
give more emphasis to the part she played. The prince's 
companion writes : " During the ten days of her illness 
he never slept. I was at the post-mortem examination. 
There were traces of poison. She is to be buried to-day." 
So she was no deceiver, but really loved the prince, and 
was the friend, perhaps even the daughter, of the Ar- 
menian, since we hear of her mother only, a German lady 
of rank, and of the persecutions of a certain noble who 
forced her to take refuge in Venice. 

The solution of this riddle Schiller would probably 
have given in his second part of the " Ghost-Seer," which 
he still owes us because he thought it would not have 



THE GEE CI'AN MAID. 309 

repaid the trouble of writing. But, in truth, it seems as 
if the author had had no determined plan, and that his 
object was the conversion of the prince, leaving the rest 
to accident or caprice — to some inspiration that might 
aid him in the details, and which gave him already, in 
the Grecian maid, a lovely German, of whom we would 
gladly know more. As it is, her death does not agree 
with her appearance on the stage, especially as we are 
informed, from the correspondence of Schiller with Lotta, 
that the poet intended her merely as a bait to attract 
the Protestant to Catholicism. 

Without troubling ourselves with the solution of ques- 
tions that belong to the tale as it exists, or following the 
traces leading to the source whence Schiller borrowed 
his materials, let us glance again at the unfinished novel, 
as it is the only work not having dramatic pretensions 
of which our illustrations treat. And yet the special 
genius of the author asserts itself more in this than in 
any similar contemporary production. Every thing here 
develops itself dramatically, as well as in his two his- 
tories, where the events which pass without comment 
before our eyes are the most interesting. The unfolding 
of character, step by step, out of the circumstances 
surrounding it, and its power, in turn, over them, 
marking every paragraph with progress, is so much in 
the manner of Schiller's writings, that he does not forget 
it anywhere. 

The interest never flags. We are always in suspense. 



310 THE GRECIAN MAID. 

There are none of those numerous episodes, or imitation 
of that broad epic style characterizing Goethe's novels. 
We are kept close to the principal object ; all inferior 
scenes are in connection with it, and receive no more 
attention than to make them illustrate the chief person- 
ages. And these never speak as in Goethe, merely to 
utter profound or beautiful remarks, applicable any- 
where, as if the author prided himself on the depth of 
his intellect, or the complacency of his wisdom. Schil- 
ler's characters speak only to advance the action, and 
reveal themselves. In " The Ghost-Seer " the prince is 
a dramatic success, quite unlike Goethe's workmanship, 
whose figures appear finished from the first, and resist 
every change which might naturally arise from the 
incidents and progress of the story. Here, on the con- 
trary, we clearly see the secret modifications of char- 
acter, and the realization of a purpose which we could 
not have surmised. 

As Schiller marvellously illustrates the inner life of 
man, so also does he know how to employ outward 
Nature, and the temporary surroundings of his heroes, 
never failing to bring them to his aid in securing the 
desired effect. In reading " Tell " the glorious Alps 
seem to be part of the play — they prepare the heart 
for the emotions awaiting it. He seemed, in fact, to 
have a very intimate acquaintance with scenery that his 
eyes never beheld, as in " The. Ghost-Seer." Here we 
have the noisy throng, and there the mystic and silent 



THE GRECIAN MAID. 311 

life natural to Venice and the adjacent islands. His 
portraitures, in a word, are all perfect, and, notwith- 
standing his inclination to philosophy, he had not yet 
reached the inference, that, if words are intended to 
conceal thought, colors are therefore meant to mis- 
represent the reality. 



TITE END. 






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